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The Traditional Balsamic Vinegar of Modena

No summer or winter can disturb it, on the contrary, hot summers and cold winters are factors that contribute to make a high-gastronomy product like the Traditional Balsamic Vinegar of Modena so special, produced by our family company since 1850. 

There are two main differences that make the Traditional Balsamic Vinegar of Modena (that is with Protected Designation of Origin) not comparable to the sweet and sour vinegars of industrial origin. 

First of all the basic ingredient: the cooked grape must, not  wine like in the other vinegars on the market.
But there is also another difference, that for sure does not pass the palate undetected.
The Traditional Balsamic Vinegar of Modena ages inside wooden barrels for at least 12 or 25 years and its particular 100 ml bottle, created by the designer Giorgetto Giugiaro, is famous all over the world and it is the only one permitted by law.

5 conditions are necessary to the production of the Traditional Balsamic Vinegar of Modena: 

  1. The microclimate of Modena
    cold for settling and warm for fermentation.  
    It is exactly the microclimate of Modena and its district, with bitterly cold winters and scorching and humid hot summers, the sufficient and necessary condition to produce a Traditional Balsamic Vinegar of Modena that is unique in the world. Therefore, its existence is due to the particular microclimate characteristics of our territory, added to the knowledges, competences and secrets that the human factor has elaborated and transmitted concerning the development of the history of Vinegar, of recipes and preparation methods.

  2. Typical Modenese grapes
    Acetaia Malpighi favours: Lambrusco of Modena (red grape), Trebbiano of Spain and Trebbiano of Modena (white grapes).

  3. Barrels
    They must be made of different woods: cherry wood, acacia wood, chestnut, durmast, mulberry and juniper wood.

  4. Consorzio Tutela Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena 
    In 2009, the “Consorzio Tutela Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena” (Traditional Balsamic Vinegar of Modena Protection Consortium) was appointed by the MIPAAF, now called MASAF, meaning “Ministry of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forestry” which represents Italy within the European Union in matters falling within its sphere of competence, to protect and promote “Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena” (Traditional Balsamic Vinegar of Modena). 

  5. A producer
    The family Malpighi has been producing T    raditional Balsamic Vinegar of Modena for 5 generations (1850).

 

How to produce the Traditional Balsamic Vinegar of Modena

An odyssey of taste lasting at least 12 years transforms the product of Modenese vines into the Traditional Balsamic Vinegar of Modena.
Its origin is the grape that, cooked with open vase, releases an ecstatic scent float in the air.
The must thickens and starts getting its traditional dark brown colour.
Then it is time for the must to ripen inside the wooden barrels: it needs a temperature variation that only the Modenese sultry summers and frosty winters can guarantee.
However, its slow aging inside the barrels is not marked only by the changing seasons, but also by a painstaking pouring it from a bigger to a smaller barrel.
The precious woods of our barrels colour with essences the sweet and sour "Balsamo".
To each wood corresponds a fragrance. Thus, the fact that each family of producers personally choses the woods for its barrels guarantees a literally unique taste to each Traditional Balsamic Vinegar of Modena.


Shaped by decades of bad weather, kept into selected Italian wood barrels, the precious liquid arrives at the end of its odyssey of taste.
Now, it is ready to be tasted: rigorously “raw”, poured in little drops on a teaspoon made of white porcelain or plastic, never of metal.