June 1, 2009 Vinegar Master

Distant Cousins: Balsamic & Cognac

A cool temperature sauce made of small amounts of traditional-style balsamic vinegar (long-aged in small, rare wood Italian casks) and Cognac (or Armagnac) is delicious and something of a family reunion, too, as you will read. 

You can make your own recipe by tasting.  Add finely sliced white truffles and a scant amount of salt to the precious liquid to top table-ready roasted meats.  A fine al dente pasta with that sauce, plus olive oil and melted butter and ground pepper, can be an explosive tour de force -- with each ingredient standing out of the mix.

What few know is that the fine French brandies and fine balsamic come from the same grape, Trebbiano, an old Roman grape. Yes, balsamic and Cognac are distant cousins.

Maybe the Romans took the grape to Gaul, way back when.  Today, in France, the grape is named Ugni Blanc or St. Emilion.

When making Cognac or other brandies, the French press their Ugni Blanc grapes, ferment the juice, distill the finished wine to higher alcohol content, then place it in oak barrels, often for decades, where it acquires color and flavor from the barrel wood.

Traditional-style balsamic vinegar is made by pressing trebbiano (and other old Roman grapes), simmering the grape juice at about 140F for several days until the initial sugar levels nearly double.  Then fermentation is used to convert some of the sugars to alcohol in the cooked must -- and that year's final juice begins its journey through a series of casks where it gains greater viscosity, critical wood flavors, added color, and balance.

(Note: whenever you read an article about true balsamic and it says that the grape juice is 'boiled' after pressing, you know you are reading an inaccurate report. The juice is simmered.  Boiling would prevent fermentation and interrupt the natural concentration and balancing process.  Beware inaccurate verbs.)