A Single Carrot

This article was first published in a shorter format by Speciality Food Magazine on 24.01.2019. The original article can be found here.

Last summer, I bought a bottle of 25 year aged, traditional balsamic vinegar. It was a PDO or Protected Designation of Origin product - the highest level of quality protection under EU law - from Reggio Emilia. I had visited the acetaia, met the producer and been impressed by his knowledge and commitment to making a product without compromise. The 25 year aged bottle was the mid-price option for his traditional method vinegars and cost €60 for a 100ml vial, which I knew to be a fair price for this type of product.

Traditional balsamic vinegars, the two protected by PDO labels, are made from 100% cooked grape must that has been slowly aged in wood barrels for a minimum of 12 years in the unique, humid climate of the Po river valley in Emilia. It is something used sparingly in professional kitchens - a drizzle over rare fillet steak, asparagus, or even ice cream - meaning that a small bottle goes a long way.

As well as its extraordinary flavour - that cannot be compared to the thick sticky, balsamic glazes, often mixed with caramel and other additives to mimic the consistency and sweetness of traditional products - it involves great craftsmanship and cannot be mass produced. It also involves the bottling up of centuries of tradition; the first generally accepted reference to a precious vinegar produced in the area of Modena and Reggio Emilia is in a poem written in the 12th century by the monk Donizo of Canossa.

Proud of my purchase, but more importantly, keen to impress with the knowledge that I had picked up in purchasing it, I brought the small bottle with me when I went to meet my family on holiday in Italy.

On the first evening, I prepared an aperitivo, putting a few precious drops of the viscous liquid onto nuggets of aged parmesan cheese. This, I had read, was a good way to appreciate the product. I also liked the idea that the two products had been made just a few miles apart - harking from the same terroir - and must have been served together for centuries.

All committed and knowledgeable food lovers, my parents and siblings enjoyed hearing about this connection and how the product was made. When tasting it they appreciated its startling depth of flavour and the notes of fig, honey, raisin and cherry wood that made up it's perfectly balanced, sweet and sour flavour profile.

The next morning, I came downstairs and saw, to my horror, that half the bottle had been emptied. Looking around furiously for a culprit, my eyes quickly landed on my mother who had cooked dinner the previous night. When I asked if she knew what had happened to it, she remarked without much care that she had used it to make a salad dressing.

The angrier I got about this alleged, gastronomic-sacrilege, the more my family mercilessly teased me. I tried making arguments about its rarity, long ageing process and artisan production all of which made it entirely unsuitable for everyday use. In the end however, the only thing that I could splutter, indignantly, that made any impact, was that we had, unknowing, consumed a €30 salad dressing.

Three ages of traditional balsamic vinegar

I was even angrier with myself for making this crass argument. Resorting to price is something you hear often with wine, and it is usually a good differentiator between those who know what they are talking about, and those who don't. The ones with genuine knowledge have the vocabulary to describe the quality of a product by focusing on its intrinsic attributes, rather than broadcasting an arbitrary monetary value.

It begs the question, how do the makers and marketers of fine food products extend their appeal beyond top chefs, the fabulously wealthy, and food nerds like myself lucky enough to visit the producers in situ?

One way of communicating quality is through hallmarks, like the EUs PDO/PGI program, that is designed to protect the use of place names that indicate where and how products are made. However, balsamic vinegar is a good example of how the less stringent PGI label, that only requires certain elements of production to happen in the defined area, has been exploited and used to market a product that bears little resemblance to the traditional PDO products.

According to the EU, only 17% of people in the common market recognise the PDO and PGI labels and, I suspect, fewer still could explain the difference between the two.

Assessing “flavour profiles”, “depth” and “complexity” is common in the trade, but inaccessible for consumers. Like the hallmark system, consumers end up relying on the supposedly independent evaluations of “experts” which are often over simplified into meaningless points scores or rankings at the point of sale.

More concerning still, in the age of online misinformation, “influencers” and “fake news”, knowing whos evaluations to trust has become a minefield. Often those making the assessments are paid for voicing a particular view or are brokers who stand to make large profits from selling products on at an inflated price.

There are also other, more philosophical problems with the system. With food and wine, quality is generally seen as being synonymous with taste. If something is high quality, then it is likely to taste good. However, most would agree that taste is subjective, whilst quality should be able to be objectified.

Contextual characteristics such as naturalness, tradition, heritage, terroir, welfare and sustainability can also be used to describe the heterogeneous qualities of food and drink. Constructing and promoting these shared connections of worth and value is likely to give consumers a more relatable understanding of the intrinsic qualities of what they are buying.

This is not to say that taste doesn't matter, or that there is no such thing as good taste, but it should be left up to the consumer to decide what is good, or high quality, based on their values and a proper understanding of production. From a consumer perspective, it is also more likely to enhance the overall enjoyment of products; so much of the pleasure that we get from quality food and drink comes from our understanding of production and the context in which it is consumed.

The controversial natural wine movement is a case in point. Wine “experts” decry the sale of what they see to be faulty products that fall shy of their quality criteria for high prices. However, in spite of this, the products have found a loyal market who care more about the fact that the method of production fits with their system of beliefs, than they do about the views of experts.

It is the challenge for the food marketing industry and specialist retailers to find producers and local communities that uphold these contextual values and extract a quality narrative that resonates with consumers. Those that communicate successfully will be able to take control of their own quality narrative, cutting out the role of traditional industry middlemen. This will lead to a stronger connection between the producers and consumers that will ultimately see producers receiving a fairer reward for their pursuit of excellence.

A group from UNISG at Acetaia San Giacomo