6 ms·

Balsamic vinegar is likely fake

19 points by willvarfar 2y ago

willvarfar 2y ago
Malt vinegar is also likely fake, apparently Tom Scott: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=642x2Y3Zla0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=642x2Y3Zla0
chrisjj 2y ago
Another clickbait article title. Shame on you BBC. Not fake. "Balsamic vinegar that is not labelled "tradizionale" (traditional) is a blend of wine vinegar and grape must, made from grapes with no particular provenance and aged in wooden or steel barrels for just a few months."
- beardyw 2y ago
  So what would make it fake?
  - kjellsbells 2y ago
    There's fake as in "this product is not any kind of vinegar" and fake as is "this vinegar has not been produced in the canonical way, in the canonical place". Italy has local standards called, DOP and IGP, if I recall correctly. DOP is the elite stuff. You dont put this on salads. Some varieties are almost gel like. This is the stuff that was sitting in someones attic for ten years. IGP is still good but not as good, and it still has to come from the right region. Costco in the US sells Kirkland balsamic vinegar di Modena, and it is IGP. You can imagine that at Costco scale, it is not sitting in someones attic. This is still excellent, by the way. Then there is all the rest, that claims to be balsamic vinegar, but was produced to meet high scale, low price points. The article is simply saying that what you likely buy in the supermarket is unlikely to be DOP and might not even be IGP. Thats not really news.
  - IshKebab 2y ago
    If it wasn't balsamic vinegar at all. This is just saying it isn't high quality balsamic vinegar from Moderna. This is just about protected names. If you make champagne but you don't do it in Champagne then it is "fake champagne", but if you make cheddar but not in Cheddar then it's "real".
    - chongli 2y ago
      If you’re making the product with cheaper ingredients and a simpler process but using the same name as a product with expensive ingredients and a long, complicated process then you’re making a fake product and attempting to capitalize on the name recognition of the original. It’s every bit as egregious as taking iron pyrite and calling it gold.
      - chrisjj 2y ago
        But they are not making the product. They are making a different product differently named. > but using the same name as a product with expensive ingredients Incorrect. The difference in name is omission of the word traditional.
  - cogman10 2y ago
    A better question to ask is "what makes it real". The problem I have with "fake" and "real", particularly with Italian and French goods, is there's often a "Produced from this region by these people" incorporated into the definition of "real". This is very apparent when you look into things like "Mozzarella". Italy would have you believe that mozzarella could only be produced in Italy as if the region somehow blesses the cheese with magic properties. The reality is the mozzarella is just renat + milk. The only arguable difference is which animal milk is used (for most, it's beef). If the breakdown process of balsamic vinegar ends up producing a chemically and flavor profile identical to just red wine vinegar and grape must, then who cares if it's "fake"?
    - throwup238 2y ago
      > A better question to ask is "what makes it real". Aging in barrels, just like whiskey and a bunch of other alcohols. The geographic designation is only important because it's the only authority that guarantees that the manufacturer is selling what they claim. I couldn't care less about Modena or Reggio Emilia but I want something that's been aged in a barrel, not just mixed with thickener to make it look reduced. It's not acceptable to dilute Everclear with food coloring and flavoring and call it whiskey, regardless of geographic designation, which is what these "fake" balsamic vinegars are essentially doing. > If the breakdown process of balsamic vinegar ends up producing a chemically and flavor profile identical to just red wine vinegar and grape must, then who cares if it's "fake"? The process doesn't produce the same flavors. Not even close. As a lover of real aged balsamic, it just doesn't compare. It's just cheap and good enough for many recipes so I use it as often as the real stuff, but it's a cheap imitation through and through.
  - chrisjj 2y ago
    > So what would make it fake? Claiming to be something it is not.
- silisili 2y ago
  Yeah, this feels more to me like Whiskey vs Bourbon where it's just standards and locations differing much of the two. I thought it was going to be more like wasabi, where most places just serve green horseradish.
  - bennyhill 2y ago
    Sounds more like wine and fortified wine to me..
- 0x457 2y ago
  No, actually, you should have kept reading. The fakes they're talking about are actual fakes - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/09/grapes-of-wrath-italian-police-target-fake-balsamic-vinegar https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/09/grapes-of-wrat...
  - takluyver 2y ago
    The BBC article especially is conflating two kinds of 'fake'. The balsamic vinegar most of us buy is not the super expensive 'Traditional balsamic vinegar', which is what they're describing aging in barrels for 12 years. It may still be 'balsamic vinegar of Modena', which is a protected term but with much less strict requirements, and consequently much cheaper. And 'balsamic vinegar' without qualifiers is not protected at all, as far as I know. It seems like a stretch to call these fakes. Either protected term can fetch a better price than generic 'balsamic vinegar', so someone will have a go at faking some paperwork to make their product more valuable. The Guardian article describes one such case that was caught (in 2019), but doesn't say much about how prevalent this is.
  - chrisjj 2y ago
    Yes, actually. I read the article and nowhere does it call the cheaper non-trad variety fake.
    - 0x457 2y ago
      Well, read it again? It's about non-trad variety vinegar being sold as traditional variety. Which is very different from non-trad being sold as non-trad.
beardyw 2y ago
I read that probably all truffle oil is fake. Hard to find a definitive statement.
- nimbius 2y ago
  id venture anything under $200/oz USD is fake. it is generally sourced as a byproduct of the petrochemical industry.
  - technotarek 2y ago
    Whenever I see statements like this that correlate price and product quality (eg wine, spirits), I’m always wondering why a “fake” wouldn’t just elevate its price to the level of the non-fake. I have a feeling most customers won’t know the difference. I guess I’m just skeptical of using price as a proxy where everything from a fancy-looking label to a nice marketing campaign will inflate the price.
    - chung8123 2y ago
      I think the reason is the fake ones are capitalizing on the demand at lower price levels. I bet there are fake expensive ones as well but it would likely be a tougher market to compete in.
    - chongli 2y ago
      At the higher price points there is margin available for quality assurance, certification of origin, and testing by experts.
    - 0x457 2y ago
      Specifically with truffle oil - its taste profile is so noticeable different, that unless you never had a real truffle, it would be easy to spot. As for different things, about 7 years ago in LA there was as huge wine counterfeit operation bust. Expensive bottles were filled with cheaper wine, re-corked and sold. This is why expensive bottles now "destroyed" one way or another. Point is - easier to sell and fewer troubles.
  - 2y ago
AdmiralAsshat 2y ago
There was a book about this that used to be available on Prime Reading: https://www.amazon.com/Real-Food-Youre-Eating-About/dp/1616207418/ https://www.amazon.com/Real-Food-Youre-Eating-About/dp/16162... Balsamic Vinegar got a chapter, IIRC.
lbwtaylor 2y ago
I'm surprised the article makes no mention of lead. >> Aged vinegars, favored by gourmets and sometimes costing $100 a bottle, contain more lead than the quicker brewed, less expensive kinds. For three imported varieties tested in 2002, people who eat one tablespoon per day would be exposed to seven to 10 times the maximum daily level of lead set by California. https://www.ehn.org/special-report-some-vinegars-often-expensive-aged-balsamics-contain-a-big-dose-of-lead-2649749136.html https://www.ehn.org/special-report-some-vinegars-often-expen... Artisanal production is very interesting and can be great, but not always.
- lisper 2y ago
  A tablespoon of traditional balsamic is a huge portion. The stuff is typically served with an eyedropper.
  - moralestapia 2y ago
    A couple tablespoons and equal parts olive oil is what I get on top of my salads everywhere I go. So, no.
    - jochem9 2y ago
      You eat something that goes for 1250 per liter by the tablespoon?
      - moralestapia 2y ago
        Yeah, I can afford $18 dollars. I must be the 0.1%.
    - lisper 2y ago
      Very unlikely that the stuff you get by the tablespoon is what is being referred to here.
skywhopper 2y ago
Truly bad headline here. There is a type of “traditional” balsamic vinegar that follows very specific guidelines. But so long as it’s not labeled as “tradizionale” and doesn’t claim to be from this region, then it’s not “fake”.
- drivingmenuts 2y ago
  It's about as real or fake as anything else on the US market then. That it's allowed to be called balsamic vinegar is the real crime.
- chrisjj 2y ago
  Precisely.
tmaly 2y ago
> The region's production is limited to only about 8,000 litres annually. It is not really clear if this limit is due to capacity or an artificial limit imposed by regulators.
aspenmayer 2y ago
Many commenters seem to be missing the distinction that makes the difference between "real" vs "fake" balsamic vinegar as mentioned in the title. "Real" balsamic vinegar as the title uses the world real is related to protected designation of origin, abbreviated PDO in English or DOP in Italian. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_designation_of_origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_designation_of_origi... This designation in the context of balsamic vinegar involves specific grapes from specific regions, but the most important characteristic in the usage of the word real in this context is that there is only a single ingredient: > True [traditional] balsamic vinegar is made from a reduction of pressed Trebbiano and Lambrusco grapes. The resulting thick syrup, called mosto cotto in Italian [grape must], is subsequently aged for a minimum of 12 years in a battery of several barrels of successively smaller sizes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balsamic_vinegar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balsamic_vinegar The confusion arises where you have products that are not traditional DOP balsamic vinegar. Other methods of producing products labeled as balsamic vinegar could actually use the above single ingredient musto cotto but with grapes from outside the two designated regions, which is then also aged in wooden barrels for at least 12 years, the same single ingredient recipe aged in batteries of wooden barrels production method used to make so-called traditional balsamic vinegar. Or, grape must may be mixed with wine vinegar and only be aged for as little as few months in non-wooden barrels - this is the type of product that seems to me to be less "real" as TFA uses the word. I would personally rather consume either traditional DOP "real" balsamic vinegar, or at least a cheaper alternative which uses the same "single ingredient grape must aged in wooden barrels at least 12 years" recipe as traditional balsamic vinegar, as that is at least the same production process. Any other vinegar product that uses blends of grape must and wine vinegar may be a fine-tasting product according to some, but to me, it isn't even the same thing, and it isn't really in the spirit of balsamic vinegar. To sell such a blend and labeling it as balsamic vinegar feels like selling blended whisky as single malt whisky - it minces words in order to subvert truth in advertising to the detriment of informed consumers attempting to buy a product that actually is what its label purports it to be. To me, these are distinctions with a difference. > A distinction without a difference is a type of logical fallacy where an author or speaker attempts to describe a distinction between two things where no discernible difference exists. It is particularly used when a word or phrase has connotations associated with it that one party to an argument prefers to avoid. > For example, a person might say "I did not lie; I merely stretched the truth a little bit." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinction_without_a_difference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinction_without_a_differen...
mynameisnoone 2y ago
Balsamic vinegar (TBV, TBVM, TBVRE), olive oil, maple syrup, wasabi, and more are all ripe (pun intended) for counterfeiting and deceptive marketing of inferior products. This is why PDOs & appellations for agricultural products exist. Caveat emptor.

19 points by willvarfar 2y ago

Malt vinegar is also likely fake, apparently Tom Scott: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=642x2Y3Zla0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=642x2Y3Zla0

chrisjj 2y ago

Another clickbait article title. Shame on you BBC. Not fake. "Balsamic vinegar that is not labelled "tradizionale" (traditional) is a blend of wine vinegar and grape must, made from grapes with no particular provenance and aged in wooden or steel barrels for just a few months."

beardyw 2y ago
So what would make it fake?
- kjellsbells 2y ago
  There's fake as in "this product is not any kind of vinegar" and fake as is "this vinegar has not been produced in the canonical way, in the canonical place". Italy has local standards called, DOP and IGP, if I recall correctly. DOP is the elite stuff. You dont put this on salads. Some varieties are almost gel like. This is the stuff that was sitting in someones attic for ten years. IGP is still good but not as good, and it still has to come from the right region. Costco in the US sells Kirkland balsamic vinegar di Modena, and it is IGP. You can imagine that at Costco scale, it is not sitting in someones attic. This is still excellent, by the way. Then there is all the rest, that claims to be balsamic vinegar, but was produced to meet high scale, low price points. The article is simply saying that what you likely buy in the supermarket is unlikely to be DOP and might not even be IGP. Thats not really news.
- IshKebab 2y ago
  If it wasn't balsamic vinegar at all. This is just saying it isn't high quality balsamic vinegar from Moderna. This is just about protected names. If you make champagne but you don't do it in Champagne then it is "fake champagne", but if you make cheddar but not in Cheddar then it's "real".
  - chongli 2y ago
    If you’re making the product with cheaper ingredients and a simpler process but using the same name as a product with expensive ingredients and a long, complicated process then you’re making a fake product and attempting to capitalize on the name recognition of the original. It’s every bit as egregious as taking iron pyrite and calling it gold.
    - chrisjj 2y ago
      But they are not making the product. They are making a different product differently named. > but using the same name as a product with expensive ingredients Incorrect. The difference in name is omission of the word traditional.
- cogman10 2y ago
  A better question to ask is "what makes it real". The problem I have with "fake" and "real", particularly with Italian and French goods, is there's often a "Produced from this region by these people" incorporated into the definition of "real". This is very apparent when you look into things like "Mozzarella". Italy would have you believe that mozzarella could only be produced in Italy as if the region somehow blesses the cheese with magic properties. The reality is the mozzarella is just renat + milk. The only arguable difference is which animal milk is used (for most, it's beef). If the breakdown process of balsamic vinegar ends up producing a chemically and flavor profile identical to just red wine vinegar and grape must, then who cares if it's "fake"?
  - throwup238 2y ago
    > A better question to ask is "what makes it real". Aging in barrels, just like whiskey and a bunch of other alcohols. The geographic designation is only important because it's the only authority that guarantees that the manufacturer is selling what they claim. I couldn't care less about Modena or Reggio Emilia but I want something that's been aged in a barrel, not just mixed with thickener to make it look reduced. It's not acceptable to dilute Everclear with food coloring and flavoring and call it whiskey, regardless of geographic designation, which is what these "fake" balsamic vinegars are essentially doing. > If the breakdown process of balsamic vinegar ends up producing a chemically and flavor profile identical to just red wine vinegar and grape must, then who cares if it's "fake"? The process doesn't produce the same flavors. Not even close. As a lover of real aged balsamic, it just doesn't compare. It's just cheap and good enough for many recipes so I use it as often as the real stuff, but it's a cheap imitation through and through.
- chrisjj 2y ago
  > So what would make it fake? Claiming to be something it is not.
silisili 2y ago
Yeah, this feels more to me like Whiskey vs Bourbon where it's just standards and locations differing much of the two. I thought it was going to be more like wasabi, where most places just serve green horseradish.
- bennyhill 2y ago
  Sounds more like wine and fortified wine to me..
0x457 2y ago
No, actually, you should have kept reading. The fakes they're talking about are actual fakes - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/09/grapes-of-wrath-italian-police-target-fake-balsamic-vinegar https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/09/grapes-of-wrat...
- takluyver 2y ago
  The BBC article especially is conflating two kinds of 'fake'. The balsamic vinegar most of us buy is not the super expensive 'Traditional balsamic vinegar', which is what they're describing aging in barrels for 12 years. It may still be 'balsamic vinegar of Modena', which is a protected term but with much less strict requirements, and consequently much cheaper. And 'balsamic vinegar' without qualifiers is not protected at all, as far as I know. It seems like a stretch to call these fakes. Either protected term can fetch a better price than generic 'balsamic vinegar', so someone will have a go at faking some paperwork to make their product more valuable. The Guardian article describes one such case that was caught (in 2019), but doesn't say much about how prevalent this is.
- chrisjj 2y ago
  Yes, actually. I read the article and nowhere does it call the cheaper non-trad variety fake.
  - 0x457 2y ago
    Well, read it again? It's about non-trad variety vinegar being sold as traditional variety. Which is very different from non-trad being sold as non-trad.

beardyw 2y ago

I read that probably all truffle oil is fake. Hard to find a definitive statement.

nimbius 2y ago
id venture anything under $200/oz USD is fake. it is generally sourced as a byproduct of the petrochemical industry.
- technotarek 2y ago
  Whenever I see statements like this that correlate price and product quality (eg wine, spirits), I’m always wondering why a “fake” wouldn’t just elevate its price to the level of the non-fake. I have a feeling most customers won’t know the difference. I guess I’m just skeptical of using price as a proxy where everything from a fancy-looking label to a nice marketing campaign will inflate the price.
  - chung8123 2y ago
    I think the reason is the fake ones are capitalizing on the demand at lower price levels. I bet there are fake expensive ones as well but it would likely be a tougher market to compete in.
  - chongli 2y ago
    At the higher price points there is margin available for quality assurance, certification of origin, and testing by experts.
  - 0x457 2y ago
    Specifically with truffle oil - its taste profile is so noticeable different, that unless you never had a real truffle, it would be easy to spot. As for different things, about 7 years ago in LA there was as huge wine counterfeit operation bust. Expensive bottles were filled with cheaper wine, re-corked and sold. This is why expensive bottles now "destroyed" one way or another. Point is - easier to sell and fewer troubles.
- 2y ago

AdmiralAsshat 2y ago

There was a book about this that used to be available on Prime Reading: https://www.amazon.com/Real-Food-Youre-Eating-About/dp/1616207418/ https://www.amazon.com/Real-Food-Youre-Eating-About/dp/16162... Balsamic Vinegar got a chapter, IIRC.

lbwtaylor 2y ago

I'm surprised the article makes no mention of lead. >> Aged vinegars, favored by gourmets and sometimes costing $100 a bottle, contain more lead than the quicker brewed, less expensive kinds. For three imported varieties tested in 2002, people who eat one tablespoon per day would be exposed to seven to 10 times the maximum daily level of lead set by California. https://www.ehn.org/special-report-some-vinegars-often-expensive-aged-balsamics-contain-a-big-dose-of-lead-2649749136.html https://www.ehn.org/special-report-some-vinegars-often-expen... Artisanal production is very interesting and can be great, but not always.

lisper 2y ago
A tablespoon of traditional balsamic is a huge portion. The stuff is typically served with an eyedropper.
- moralestapia 2y ago
  A couple tablespoons and equal parts olive oil is what I get on top of my salads everywhere I go. So, no.
  - jochem9 2y ago
    You eat something that goes for 1250 per liter by the tablespoon?
    - moralestapia 2y ago
      Yeah, I can afford $18 dollars. I must be the 0.1%.
  - lisper 2y ago
    Very unlikely that the stuff you get by the tablespoon is what is being referred to here.

skywhopper 2y ago

Truly bad headline here. There is a type of “traditional” balsamic vinegar that follows very specific guidelines. But so long as it’s not labeled as “tradizionale” and doesn’t claim to be from this region, then it’s not “fake”.

drivingmenuts 2y ago
It's about as real or fake as anything else on the US market then. That it's allowed to be called balsamic vinegar is the real crime.
chrisjj 2y ago
Precisely.

tmaly 2y ago

> The region's production is limited to only about 8,000 litres annually. It is not really clear if this limit is due to capacity or an artificial limit imposed by regulators.

aspenmayer 2y ago

Many commenters seem to be missing the distinction that makes the difference between "real" vs "fake" balsamic vinegar as mentioned in the title. "Real" balsamic vinegar as the title uses the world real is related to protected designation of origin, abbreviated PDO in English or DOP in Italian. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_designation_of_origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_designation_of_origi... This designation in the context of balsamic vinegar involves specific grapes from specific regions, but the most important characteristic in the usage of the word real in this context is that there is only a single ingredient: > True [traditional] balsamic vinegar is made from a reduction of pressed Trebbiano and Lambrusco grapes. The resulting thick syrup, called mosto cotto in Italian [grape must], is subsequently aged for a minimum of 12 years in a battery of several barrels of successively smaller sizes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balsamic_vinegar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balsamic_vinegar The confusion arises where you have products that are not traditional DOP balsamic vinegar. Other methods of producing products labeled as balsamic vinegar could actually use the above single ingredient musto cotto but with grapes from outside the two designated regions, which is then also aged in wooden barrels for at least 12 years, the same single ingredient recipe aged in batteries of wooden barrels production method used to make so-called traditional balsamic vinegar. Or, grape must may be mixed with wine vinegar and only be aged for as little as few months in non-wooden barrels - this is the type of product that seems to me to be less "real" as TFA uses the word. I would personally rather consume either traditional DOP "real" balsamic vinegar, or at least a cheaper alternative which uses the same "single ingredient grape must aged in wooden barrels at least 12 years" recipe as traditional balsamic vinegar, as that is at least the same production process. Any other vinegar product that uses blends of grape must and wine vinegar may be a fine-tasting product according to some, but to me, it isn't even the same thing, and it isn't really in the spirit of balsamic vinegar. To sell such a blend and labeling it as balsamic vinegar feels like selling blended whisky as single malt whisky - it minces words in order to subvert truth in advertising to the detriment of informed consumers attempting to buy a product that actually is what its label purports it to be. To me, these are distinctions with a difference. > A distinction without a difference is a type of logical fallacy where an author or speaker attempts to describe a distinction between two things where no discernible difference exists. It is particularly used when a word or phrase has connotations associated with it that one party to an argument prefers to avoid. > For example, a person might say "I did not lie; I merely stretched the truth a little bit." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinction_without_a_difference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinction_without_a_differen...

mynameisnoone 2y ago

Balsamic vinegar (TBV, TBVM, TBVRE), olive oil, maple syrup, wasabi, and more are all ripe (pun intended) for counterfeiting and deceptive marketing of inferior products. This is why PDOs & appellations for agricultural products exist. Caveat emptor.