“This is not just vinegar. This is balsamic. They are not the same,” Daniele Barbieri said when I visited his family’s Acetaia del Cristo in this Northern Italian city last fall. I heard him, but I was also engaged, engrossed in the parade of flavors in my mouth.

Mr. Barbieri had suggested that I stick my pinkie inside a 165-year-old juniper-wood barrel. I did, coating my finger with thick, mahogany-black fluid. I tasted it: sweet, lush, acidic, alpine. “You will taste that for a long time,” he said.

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Source: http://www.post-gazette.com/