When the Giusti family began to make their aceto in 1605, the word Italy was not yet on the horizon. In the traditional way of Modena, one of the hearts of today’s Emilia-Romagna region, this butcher family It kept within its walls the secret of its balsamic vinegar for almost three centuries.
International fairs, years of aging and the approval of the Italian royal house They were the accolade that already in the 19th century showed Giuseppe Giusti that this family treasure had to be made known to the world.
Today, more than five hundred years later, Acetaia Giusti claims to be the oldest balsamic vinegar factory in Modena in the world, in whose centenary barrels sleeps a seasoning with which pages of Italian history have been written.
Kings, commoners, the beginnings in a delicatessen in the center of Modena, gold medals, their own vineyards and all this keeping the same last name after half a millennium in a figure so monstrous that it reveals that in this house, timing is everything.
From butchers in Via Farini to masters of aceto
The Emilia-Romagna region, in addition to being the epicenter of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, is also one of the world paradises of the breeding of the pig and the sausages. It is not surprising that this gloss began in 1605 with a butchery beginning, the one that Francesco and Giuseppe Giusti put their names and surnames in Via Farini, the epicenter of Modena.
Years ago they already made their products, a few meters from the Ducal Palace of Modena, where the Duke of the East ruled the then city-state. There the Giusti, in addition to their pork pie devotion, maintained with family zeal a product that centuries later would see the light.
Conceived as a tonic, as a medicine and also as a gift after a birth or at a wedding, the must of their own grapes, After pressing, they were cooked and left to age in barrels of different woods, where it absorbed aromas and colors that we now identify with the authentic PDO balsamic aceto from Modena.
This is how we planted ourselves at the dawn of the 18th century when Giuseppe Giusti (watch out for this name, because Giuseppe’s abound in this house) decided to form the Large Deposit Aceto Balsamico di Giuseppe Giusti, acquiring old barrels from other houses in Modena and increasing production.
Black, intense, slightly juicy and fruity, with a touch of moderate acidity and an unusual density, “The Giusti kept this cooked grape must in their barrels under the ricalzi and dei travasi system”, Anita Campana explained to us on our visit to the acetaia.
The same operation of criaderas and soleras which is made with sherry wine, but transferred here to a non-alcoholic product, which ages in different woods, thus filling the bottles with which they were supplied at the family level from the smallest barrel.
The nineteenth-century hatching
A 150-year-old sleeper that remained reserved only for family consumption and that in the middle of the 19th century, another Giuseppe Giusti (the third different one that we will mention) decided that this product did not only have to stay at home.
1861 forms the double turning point of this house. On the one hand, the Italian unification. On the other hand, the presentation in society of Giusti’s aceto. The place, Florence; space, the Esposizione Nazionale Italiana of 1861, arranged by Vittorio Emmanuele, king and unifier of the country, to give value to the national producers.
Almost 9,000 participants, among them the Giusti, who attended the event with the aceto that slept on the drums (that’s what the different sequences of aceto barrels are called) A3, at rest for 90 years, and whose gold medal opened the doors of a unique product.
“With that guarantee, Giuseppe decided two things,” he commented Anita Campana, tourist hospitality and sales specialist of the brand, in charge of guiding us on the visit. “The first was write your prescription balsamic vinegar in two pages that we still keep today and that are dated 1863 where he talks about how aceto is made, “he says. On the other hand, start international expansion.
“They were times of the Belle Époque and the great universal fairs. Paris, Antwerp, Brussels … They thus became at the end of the 19th century the places where the excellence of Giusti acetos was validated “, he indicates. Curiosity is also in an evolution of marketing as well.
Modern times and real validation
The twentieth century enters with the support of the great fairs and with Modena as the epicenter of a product that has no equal in the world. No one else cooks grape must and lets it acidify into an all-rounder. There is the irony that balsamic aceto is a different viticultural product from wine that can be – and is in many cases – more expensive than the wine itself.
What in other places it might seem an outrage (to let a must ‘vinegar’), in Modena it became a secular religion that, like all great products, has also allowed a certain levity in its rules. Reason why prices are so changeable and why it is easy to give a ‘pig for a hare’ in the sector.
It is not a vinegar, or not purely, because vinegar is the fermentation of grape must -uncooked- and its subsequent conversion into acetic acid. Nevertheless, the grace of aceto is in being a fresh must that is cooked, This is the reason why its sweet character predominates as it concentrates the sugars and that, thanks to the aging and that remaining acid, it represents an elegant contrast on the palate.
This is how the Giusti aceto evolved, whose barrels (more than 700) include tricentennial elements, like the A3, the oldest of all the batteries and which forms the main axis of the museum where visitors are received, on the outskirts of Modena.
However, the history of this house is linked to the city center. In 1900, after international successes, the original pork shop becomes the Premiata Salumeria Giusti, converted into a meeting point for the gastronomic excellence of the area.
Thus the name, fame and repercussion of Giusti acetos (which today are made under two formats protected by official registers, several PDO recipes and some PGI recipes) are expanded. So much that in 1929 they became official suppliers of balsamic vinegar for the Italian Royal Household, which allows them to add the regal seal to their packaging.
The royal houses fall, but not the aceto
The convulsion of World War II and the rise of fascism overthrew the Italian monarchy, turning the country into a republic, but in this maremagnum of changes, Giusti continued to survive and preserving its tradition and savoir faire through the different generations (today they are in the seventeenth).
It began to be exported already during the 1930s, even reusing packaging due to the high price of new bottles. “When it started to be bottled, bottles of lambrusco wine were reused because glass was very expensive, but aceto was too expensive to carry in such large bottles. So later they had to adapt to smaller formats, but keeping the shape of a bottle of lambrusco “, he indicated.
It would be the germ of the collection with which Giusti opens up to the world today, most of which they have nothing to do with the flavor that we associate with the acetates that usually reach us, too acidic, too abundant in vinegar or even with caramel, which are part of a minimum specification allowed by Italian legislation and with which Giusti acetos do not agree.
Nor do they add caramel (which is used to give color and some sweetness), nor do they use white wine vinegar -only the mixture of vinegar from their grapes: trebbiano and lambrusco-, nor do they add a huge amount of vinegar to the final mix, maintaining the purity of its legacy.
This is how they currently make five different recipes for your PGI acetos, that allow more creative freedom; another two for Tradizional PDOs, that only admit ages of 12 or 15 years and have more restrictive legislation; and set aside one unparalleled product series.
This is the case, for example, of Giusti 50 and Giusti 100, the crown jewels, with acetes of a density that almost looks like syrup and that they are respectively over 50 and 100 years old. Historical treasures packaged as if they were high perfumery and a very limited edition (barely 500 bottles each) that come out of the iconic A3 batteria, the dean of the house.
Its price, beyond 300 euros for 50ml of product. Its value, even more incalculable. All this as a culmination of the odyssey that one day a Giuseppe Giusti decided to start to put his surname on top of the world of balsamic vinegar from Modena.
Images | Acetaia Giusti
Directly to the Palate | This is how true Modena vinegar is made (which has nothing to do with what we buy here
Directly to the Palate | Journey to the cradle of Parmesan: how the world’s most famous cheese is made