Cooked grape must, between twenty and ninety per cent, and wine vinegar, between ten and eighty, plus an optional touch of caramel: blended and aged for at least sixty days in wooden containers, they give Aceto Balsamico di Modena, dense, sweet-and-sour, dark brown in colour. It is a different product, in process and timing, from Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena, the kind aged for years in batteries of small barrels of different woods, with yearly transfers and top-ups: that version remains rarer and more expensive.
The Protected Geographical Indication mark arrived on 3 July 2009, after three years of disputes with Germany, Greece and France, who contested its exclusivity. The production zone covers the provinces of Modena and Reggio Emilia.
Today about a hundred million litres are produced each year, ninety-two per cent of it exported: a business worth more than a billion euros, the best-selling Italian condiment in the world.
