Hugo had another work morning while Caro went for a walk and did some shopping. She found a local market selling clothes for €1 and €2, then bought a supermarket lasagne for a quick lunch before we left.
At 13:00 we walked to the station for the 20-minute train to Modena.
We had originally wanted to join a farm tour at one of the producers making traditional balsamic vinegar. It would have required several transport hops, a 1.3 km walk and pre-booking, so we decided to keep it simple. We would visit the UNESCO-listed Piazza Grande and the Giusti boutique in town, where they also offer tastings.
At Giusti we tasted the 12-year and 25-year DOP balsamic vinegars, followed by four IGP versions. We bought two bottles of their Three Gold Medals IGP.
DOP and IGP sound similar but are quite different products. Traditional Balsamic Vinegar of Modena DOP is made only from cooked grape must and matured in a battery of progressively smaller wooden barrels. Each year, some is taken from the smallest barrel and it is topped up from the next one, continuing back through the battery. The two official versions are Affinato, aged for at least 12 years, and Extravecchio, aged for at least 25.
Balsamic Vinegar of Modena IGP can combine cooked or concentrated grape must with wine vinegar. It spends at least 60 days in wooden containers and can be labelled Invecchiato once it has aged for at least three years.
In Piazza Grande we had a late lunch of small meat-filled tortellini with Parmigiano sauce and larger pumpkin-filled tortelloni with balsamic.
Both were rather good.
Hugo was still feeling sick and Caro was also tired, so we decided to head back.
On the way to the station we saw a little shop that looked like a café, but its windows were filled with balsamic vinegars from different farms. After staring through the window for a while, we went inside and met a very chatty woman.
She probably thought she spoke English, but about 90% of it was Italian, with only the occasional “OK” and similar words in English. Nevertheless, we understood everything she said.
She showed us more than ten different bottles, leafed through every page of a brochure about a four-generation family, explained the entire IGP and DOP system again, and told us how bad supermarket balsamic vinegar is. Eventually, without us managing to say much or even ask for it, she started giving us a tasting as well.
These farm bottles tasted just as good as, if not better than, the ones at the expensive boutique we had just visited. We bought another three bottles.
What a unique and memorable Italian experience.
Back in Bologna, we went to the supermarket and bought another two bottles of balsamic vinegar. We now had seven bottles, probably weighing more than 2 kg together, to lug around.
For food on tomorrow’s train, we ordered two pizzas on Glovo: a Margherita and a Capricciosa. We ate two slices of the Margherita for dinner and kept everything else for tomorrow.
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