balsamic vinegar

Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy, the provinces the Aceto Balsamico di Modena IGP is made in; its traditional form, the Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena, made from the cooked must of Modena's grapes in the province's acetaie by procedures its production rules call centuries old

The Tradizionale cooked over direct fire, fermented and aged through a series of small barrels of different woods for at least twelve years, and bottled only in Modena in its own glass; protected as a designation of origin by Council Regulation 813/2000; the everyday Aceto Balsamico di Modena registered as a geographical indication in 2009 over objections from Germany, France and Greece, where vinegars sold as Balsamessig, balsamico and balsamon were already on the market; and in 2019 the Court of Justice ruled that the protection does not reach the words aceto and balsamico on their own

Two designations do most of the work here, and France warned at registration that they would be confused. Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena DOP is cooked grape must alone, aged at least twelve years with nothing added but the mother, and twenty-five for extra vecchio. Aceto Balsamico di Modena IGP is a blend in which cooked or concentrated must need be only a fifth of the volume, with at least a tenth of wine vinegar and some vinegar aged ten years, and it needs sixty days in wood; it may be sold in plastic sachets of 25 millilitres. France objected that it had no reputation of its own apart from the Tradizionale's and that consumers could be misled about its nature and origin, and the Commission registered it in 2009 regardless. The supermarket bottle is not an imitation operating outside the system: it is protected too, under the weaker of the two names, and that is the sharper version of the usual complaint. Beyond that name, the regulation itself let the words aceto and balsamico be used across the Union, and the Court of Justice, asked about a German firm selling vinegar from Baden wines as Deutscher balsamico, ruled in 2019 that the protection covers Aceto Balsamico di Modena only as a whole. Geographic indication did not fail to keep the mass market out: it issued one part of it a licence and left the word balsamico to the rest.