HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!

Today is March 14th. Pi day, yes, but more importantly my dad's birthday!


HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!
(Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday to you. Haaaappppy Birthday to Daaaaaaa-aaaaad! Happy Birthday to you.)


I got you a PRESENT!!



You can unwrap it virtually RIGHT now!!



(Click on the pictures to make them bigger!)

Now for the story behind the gift!

In honor of my dad's love of aceto balsamico, I took a day trip to Vignola. In Vignola I made an appointment to have a private tour of La ca' dal non (In Bolognese dialect = grandmother's house), an award winning acetaia that has been family run since 1883.

To get to Vignola, we took a train from Bologna to the end of the tracks, arriving at one of the smallest train stations I've ever seen.

To give you an idea of the kind of town we were in... when we tried to orient ourselves to the city (with my hand drawn map), we noticed that there weren't any street signs. So, naturally, we asked some people how to get to La Ca' dal Non. The first person we asked had never heard of La Ca' dal Non, and the second hadn't heard of either La Ca' dal Non or the street it was on. The third set of people knew the street and pointed us in the right direction. So we started blindly walking in the direction they were pointing. About 10 minutes later (we had been walking the whole time) a car pulled over next to us, and the woman we had asked earlier ran up to us. Apparently she had walked home, looked up directions for us, then drove in her car to find us and tell us exactly how to get there!

So we followed our new directions. On our way to the acetaia (place where vinegar is made), we passed a farm. I took this picture as I listened to the chichirichi (cook-a-doodle-doo) of the roosters.



There was a little old Italian lady shovelling some snow in front of her gate. I asked her if we were headed in the right direction. After she was done explaining exactly how to get there she said (obviously in Italian): "you must be from very far away. Milan, maybe?" When I told here three of us were from America and one of us was from New Zeland, I thought she was going to have a heart attack! At the very least we provided the neighborhood gossip for the week.

When we finally arrived, Vittoria, the owner of the acetaia greeted us at the gate and welcomed us into his living room, where he explained to us the process of producing real aceto balsamico with his homemade diagram. I'll try my best to remember most of his explanation, but he explained everything in Italian, so I'm afriad the explanation won't be extremely detailed. This is a picture Vittorio took of us after explaining the process.


Step 1: Grow the grapes.

The first thing that Vittorio showed us was his oldest grape vines that were over 200 years old! These two vines alone produces 200 liters of grape juice with an unusually high level of acid (a good thing when making vinegar)



Step 2: Cook the grapes.

Slowly. Very slowly. 3 or 4 days over a low flame to get everything out of the grapes. This is where Vittorio cooks all of his grapes. Right now he's using it like a green house to keep his plants warm. Not such a hot picture. It was small and the smell was AMAZING. It smelled like grape jelly tastes.


Step 3: Make room for the fresh cooked grape juice.

The most well-known and interesting step in making aceto balsamico. First, remove the contents of the smallest and most precious barrel (see step 4). Then move the contents from the second smallest into the smallest. From the third smallest to the second smallest, and so on until the biggest barrel has enough room for the fresh mosto. Here are some pictures of the Vittorio's barrels. First, the biggest of the barrels, and second, the smallest. The smaller barrels are kept higher up for some reason (he may have said that the reason was that they are lighter...)

Some balsamic vinegar is aged 12 years, while the finest (and most expensive) is aged for at least 25 years. The smallest barrels in the last picture are the final barrels of the 25 year old again process.

The coolest thing about this step is that 100% of the vinegar is never removed from the barrel. He said that usually a little more than half is removed - leaving la madre (the mother) as he called it. Meaning that whatever balsamic vinegar is removed has a flavor from all the preceding vintages. The first balsamic vinegar I bought my dad is named Franco after Vittorio's grandfather, because it is the vinegar that comes from his grandfather's first set of barrels first used in 1883 (the darker barrels against the back wall in the picture below). These barrels have an odd shape to help keep a higher percentage of the new vinegar in contact with the la madre. La madre from these barrels has a part (a very small part) that is 127 years old! Here are his grandfather's first barrels.

Another interesting thing about making aceto balsamico is that the vinegar takes on the flavor (to some extent) of the wood used to make the barrels. Most commonly rovine (oak) is used, but many different woods can be used, for example Pera (Pear), Mela (Apple), Cenera (Ash), or Ginepro (Juniper). The second Balsamic vinegar that I bought is aged at least 12 years, but it is made with the somewhat rarer Juniper. When they were clearing trees for a ski slope, Vittorio went into the mountains and hand picked the Juniper trees he wanted to make barrels out of. Then, he sent the wood to a German barrelmaker who fashioned the barrels with the least amount of cuts possible (thereby keeping the wood's fibers in tact). This vinegar was absolutely fantastic. Somehow the wood gives the vinegar the flavor of raspberries. Despite being aged only 12 years, It was my favorite that we tasted. Below is a picture of the German made barrels.


Step 4: Send the finished product to Spilamberto to be approved by the Consortium of Professional Balsamic Vinegar Tasters.

The vinegar that is removed from the smallest barrels is sent to a town nearby to be rated by the experts. Based upon taste, smell, and appearance it is given a rating between 0 and 400. The ratings of 5 independent tasters are averaged to yeild a final score. If the vinegar doesn't ear 230 points for a 12 year old or 250 points for a 25 year old, the vinegar is "denounced." Those that pass are bottled by the Cosortium. A total of only 85,000 bottles are produced every year - only 8,500 liters to feed the demand of the entire world. The top score is the winning vinegar for the year. There is also another award in which the 5 top scoring vinegars are used in a dinner for all the tasters, and the vinegar that goes best with food wins the coveted premio da tavola (prize of the table).

After the tour and lesson on how to make aceto balsamico, we got the opportunity to taste a sampling of Vittorio's balsamic vinegars. He taught us the correct technique before we drank spoonfuls of pure vinegar! They were almost all delicious! The whole time I imagined eating a steak or my mom's bruchetta with this vinegar and my mouth didn't stop watering.

The last thing that I bought for my dad was one of the glass bulb thingies that you use to pour the vinegar and keep it fresh. You can see them sticking out of all the open bottles of vinegar.

I had an awesome time in Vignola, and I hope that my dad enjoys his gifts as much as I enjoyed going to pick them out!

You'll definitely have to excuse any errors in this post - It's been a full day!!

CIAO!