The Ultimate Vinegar Extravaganza, The Medicinal & Culinary Miracles Of Vinegar, How Vinegar Is Made

My name is Ben Greenfield, and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life.

Podcast, it's as simple as drizzling it over prosciutto, goat cheese or figs. As a first course, you could pour it over vanilla ice cream with strawberries for dessert. It's limitless, right? It's kind of like with the olive oil. You choose your adventure, you choose your fun, but basically, whatever you're cooking, this takes it to the next level. That's like the goal and kind of gets you reinvigorated in the kitchen.

Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show.

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That's healwith heat.com mention my name Ben for a smoking hot deal and free shipping. Hey. So I've talked before on the podcast about how I get these olive oils, like artisanal olive oils, they're called, from this place called the Fresh Pressed Olive Oil Club, sent to me on a quarterly basis. And they're really great. Like, I use them to dress up my entire diet. And it's really good, unadulterated olive oil. I like them so much, I did a podcast with their founder, TJ Robinson, called the Olive Oil Hunter. It's a pretty badass name or badass moniker. And so we had a fantastic discussion. And then like two months ago, I get this package from TJ and I thought it was olive oils. I open it, it wasn't. It was vinegars. Like these four different sensational vinegars, like, handpicked by tj and they were like, acidic and sweet and tart and in this whole variety of different kind of like, versions. I didn't even realize so many different versions of vinegar existed. But there's like a pear balsamic vinegar and a Calamansi gourmet vinegar, and this a condimento Balsamico de Modena vinegar, which I think is another form of a balsamic vinegar, a vinegar de ban use. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but this one was just like super bright and tart and Italian vinegar. And I enjoyed them immensely and later found out that tj, kind of similar to what he's done with the Fresh Pressed Olive Oil Club, is now doing a vinegar club. So anyways, I decided that I want to interview TJ about vinegars, like, how to use them, what kind of recipes to use vinegar in, the versatility of vinegar, how to do, like, your own marinades and glazes and sauces. And I have just really enjoyed the process of learning vinegar. But the thing is there are health aspects of vinegar that I think more people should know about. And I started to dive into it to prepare to interview TJ and thought, holy cow, there's so much here. So what I thought would be fun was for me to give you like a background on the medicinal uses, particularly the anti glycemic effects of vinegar, but a lot more for vinegar before I actually get TJ on and take a deep dive into a lot more of the culinary aspects of vinegar. So the show notes for everything that you're going to hear, my own descriptions for you and background of vinegar all the way down to my fascinating discussion with TJ you're going to find@BenGreenfieldLife.com Vinegar Podcast. That's BenGreenfieldLife.com Vinegar podcast. So here we go. First of all, TJ is going to share a little bit more about how the vinegars are made at the specific farms that we talk about. But vinegar that actually comes from a French word, vinaigre, that means sour wine. And you can make vinegar from pretty much anything you can ferment. So you can make it from wine, molasses, dates, apples, pears, grapes, maple syrup, potatoes, beets, like frickin, whey, coconut honey, you name it. So initially yeasts will ferment any of the food sugars and any of those products I mentioned to alcohol. But then what they do is they add bacteria, it's called acetic acid bacteria, that converts the alcohol to of all things, acetic acid. And commercial vinegar is made by either a fast or a slow fermentation process. So for the fast fermentation process, that liquid gets oxygenated by agitating it and then the bacterial culture is submerged and that allows for the rapid fermentation. Then for the slow vinegar method, which is usually used for things like wine vinegars, that's where they grow the acetic acid bacteria on the surface of the liquid in the fermentation. Fermentation takes weeks or sometimes months, but that longer fermentation period allows for the accumulation of this non toxic like slime. That's basically yeast and acetic acid bacteria. And it's known as the mother. You might have seen the mother before if you've had kombucha. That's a popular like vinegar, like drinking compound, a fermented compound and it has this mother in it and that's the yeast and the acetic acid bacteria. So a lot of manufacturers of vinegars will filter and pasteurize the final vinegar product before bottling to prevent the mother from forming. Because a lot of people don't like that almost like gooey booger like substance in their vinegar. But that's where it comes from. So most of the cool properties of vinegar arise from the presence of that acetic acid, that organic acid. It's responsible for the tart flavor and the pungent kind of like biting odor of vinegars. But acetic acid is not itself vinegar. Okay? You can't just like dilute acetic acid and call it vinegar because vinegar also has vitamins and minerals and mineral salts and amino acids and polyphenols like caffeic acid and catechin and other health compounds you might have heard of. And even non volatile organic acids like tartaric acid and citric acid and malic acid and lactic acid. Now, there's a whole bunch of different kinds of vinegars too. And TJ will get into this with us. But you've got, you know, basically herbal vinegars, that's like wine vinegars or white distilled vinegars. And they'll typically season those with things like garlic or basil or tarragon or cinnamon or clove or nutmeg. Then there's fruit vinegars, which are wine and white vinegars that they'll sweeten with fruit juice to give you like a sweet sour taste. And then you've got balsamic vinegars. And that would be like in Italy, they'll make that from grapes, which gets harvested super late, fermented slowly, and then age in different kinds of wood. You might with like Asian vinegars, be familiar with rice wine vinegar that's made in Asia, or coconut vinegar made in India or the Philippines, or date vinegar is a very, very popular in the Middle East. But all these are just examples of ways that you can take this acetic acid and modify it to create vinegar. Some of them disuse some of the things I want you to know about before we get into the culinary aspects with tj. So first of all, vinegar has a really good effect for fighting infection. This dates all the way back to Hippocrates back in 400-300 BC, the father of modern medicine who would actually recommend vinegar for cleaning things like ulcers and sores. And it's used all the way up to physicians in modern day, you know, in many cases, for example, they would formulate what's called oxymel, which is this popular ancient medicine, and that was used for coughs and still works very well for coughs. It's Just a mix of honey. And you typically mix four parts honey with one part vinegar. And that's an amazing cough syrup that you can just make at home if you don't have the time to go by the overpriced cough drops at the whole paycheck. So that's one way that you can use vinegar in addition to using it topically. But it's also used as a household disinfectant. Like we use it a lot to clean our kitchen and our bathrooms at the Greenfield house. Unlike bleach solutions, it doesn't really cause as much damage. You can even swish with it in the mouth for an anti infective type of treatment in the mouth. You can use it for insect stings, for jellyfish stings, for nail fungus, for head lice, for warts. Like, there are so many topical applications for vinegar. It's one of those things that's just like, kind of like oil of oregano is one thing that's always in the Greenfield medicine cabinet. Vinegar is also a big component of our home medicine cabinet. Now, the topical effects of vinegar are not the only medicinal effect. It also has some really powerful cardiovascular effects. A lot of people are familiar with taking a shot of vinegar before you have a meal to keep blood pressure or blood sugar low. And that works. But vinegar also lowers blood pressure. You can actually consume vinegar on a regular basis. And they've done studies on this and found reductions in what's called renin activity and aldosterone concentration leading into a direct drop in blood pressure and management or support of healthy blood pressure. With the regular consumption of vinegar. It may also affect like the calcium absorption in the colon. That could be why it's having an effect as well on blood pressure. But they have reported a lower risk for fatal ischemic heart disease among participants in this huge nurses health study who had oil and vinegar salad dressing frequently. Obviously there's a lot of other crap you can get in salad dressing, but the idea of just like taking and TJ will probably talk about this, I'm guessing, but extra virgin olive oil with just like some of his artisanal vinegars, mixing that together and having that on the counter, you know, with some sourdough bread or some salad, for example, amazing for its cardiovascular and blood pressure lowering effect. Now, vinegar also has anti tumor activities. They've noted tumor regression in rodent models who have pre existing cancer, particularly colon cancer, who frequently consume a vinegar medium. Now I have not talked to anyone who's ever done like a vinegar enema that might burn A little bit. I'm not saying to put up the butt, but regular consumption of these bacterial fermented vinegars seems to help the colon, especially when it also has dietary fiber, produce more short chain fatty acids and more butyrate, which allows for better cell differentiation and better health in the colonic flora. Vinegars are also a really, really good source of polyphenols, which I mentioned earlier. And that might also be why vinegar is associated with this strong anti cancer effect that you'd also associate with things like fruits and vegetables and wine and coffee and chocolate and you know, because those are so commonly used in the prevention of cancers as well as cardiovascular disease. I think that vinegar can be added to that list of foods for the polyphenol aspects of vinegar for disease risk lowering for a lot of different chronic diseases. So next is the blood sugar control works like gangbusters. I mean, obviously there's lots of expensive supplements out there like berberine. My company, Kion, we make kion lean, which has bitter melon extract in it and some other vinegar like compounds that can help to lower blood sugar after a meal. Metformin is another popular one. Dihydroberine is another popular one. But frankly, if you've already got vinegar in your cabinet, you have a pretty cheap solution. I know it's not the tastiest, but you have a pretty cheap solution that you can literally grab a shot glass from your cocktail cabinet, put the vinegar in it, shoot that back anytime before you have carbohydrates. And I wear a continuous blood glucose monitor, so I can speak to the effectiveness of this. It really does lower blood sugar. And the reason that they think that is is the acetic acid apparently helps the metabolizing of a lot of different forms of sugar like sucrase and lactase and maltase. And so essentially it's acting as like a blood glucose disposal agent by affecting the enzymes that help to digest these carbohydrates. I mean that, that's why it's kind of cool. You could like take bread, dip it in a vinegar medium, and lower the ability of that bread to be able to raise your blood glucose, which would also of course cause you to become fuller in a faster period of time and would also lower a lot of the potential health effects of having chronically elevated blood glucose. So the glycemic effect of vinegar is pretty cool too. And again, it's literally as simple as just like taking a shot right before you have a meal. And in most cases, apple cider vinegar seems to be very effective. For that. But some of TJ's vinegars, like his pear vinegar, I can get a similar effect with, and I think it tastes a lot better. And I suspect the polyphenol content might be higher. Now, of course, talking about the medical aspects of vinegar when it comes to lowering blood pressure, lowering cancer risk, having an anti glycemic effects, being used for cleaning, being used for topical infections or funguses, et cetera, that's all cool. But the flavor profile and the way that you can use vinegar from a culinary standpoint is also fantastic. Not all vinegar is created equal. I can't wait for you to hear from TJ about these vinegars that he's now just like the fresh pressed olive oil club, allowing for you to have delivered to your house on a quarterly basis. And it's like right up there with one of my favorite culinary shipments. Now when I get TJ's vinegar and when I get like my Kalima salt and when I get TJ's olive oil, these are all things that just make life freaking better from a culinary standpoint. So that all being said, let's jump in and talk to TJ Robinson, the olive oil hunter, who I suppose is now the vinegar hunter. All right, folks, well, as promised, we're moving on to the actual interview with my colon culinary expert on this podcast, TJ Robinson. Like I mentioned, he's known as the olive oil hunter, but I have now come to know him as I suppose the vinegar hunter too. I don't know if that rolls off the tongue quite as well, but TJ is actually known for his palate. I mean, he's judged in Italian olive oil tasting competitions. He's been importing this rare fresh pressed olive oil that's super flavorful and healthful extra virgin olive oil for years now. And like I mentioned, I've been accustome customer for gosh, I think almost 10 years now with the olive oils. And of course the only sad part is when we run out, which we occasionally do because we go through a lot of olive oil as a family, we got to go to the grocery store and buy olive oil. It's like a night and day difference as far as the pungent and the flavor and the aroma and everything else. So we're kind of spoiled with olive oil. But anyways, I'm going to link to if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com Vinegar podcast, an article as well as a podcast on the whole olive oil thing, because we're not going to focus on olive oil today. As I know you've already gathered, we're going to focus on vinegar because TJ knows a lot about vinegar and he's just been blowing the socks off my palate. I'm just going to make up that metaphor with these vinegars that he's been sending. So everything that you hear, if you're interested in getting this vinegar, we set up a URL for you. It's greenfieldpantry.com that gets you the four bottle set of vinegar. You don't need a membership or anything like that. And it's a fantastic deal they set up over there. So greenfieldpantry.com then all the shownotes are going to be@bengreenfieldlife.com vinegar podcast. So, TJ, first of all, welcome back to the show. And second of all, what happened? Did you just get bored with olive oil here?

That's hilarious. No, I did not get bored. I'm really happy to be back. I can't thank you enough for all your support of the olive oil club. Olive oil is one of those things that really goes hand in hand with vinegar. Like, it's like a match made in heaven.

Yeah, well, duh. For anybody who's had the bread on the table with the, with the dipping bowl and the vinegar and the olive oil, it's kind of like turkeys and cranberry. And if the vinegar is not there, it's still pretty good. But for me, the vinegar, the olive oil, and then if it's a really, really great day, there's also a little bit of raw honey and a little bit of salt out and I can literally just like sit down to my wife's fermented sourdough bread and just, just crush it with that alone.

Absolutely. Well, you really. And those, those items you've collected, you've got amazing fat. And you know, we know that flat, that fat adds a lot of flavor and also texture to our food and health benefits. There's acid, which really could be anything from lemon juice to. You mentioned cranberries with turkey. Cranberries. Acid. Think acid. Right. We're thinking about a category here that vinegar falls in and under. And also great salt. You know, you mentioned that you love great salt in the intro, which you did a fantastic job in the intro. You really laid the groundwork and did a lot of the heavy lifting, but, you know, really getting into it. And you know why I got interested in vinegar? I travel a lot. I'm into cultures, I'm into cuisines. My work for as the Olive Oil Hunter, which I've been Doing for a few decades now takes me to amazing regions where not only grapes are grown, but also olives. Olives and grapes. So both are planted there and other fruits as well. So essentially I'm in these areas exploring the cuisine and the culture. And a lot of times when vinaigrettes are made, whether people are deglazing pans or whether they're marinating or saucing or pickling or drizzling or finishing a dish, there's usually a local vinegar on the table. And when I say local, these are barrel aged vinegars. These aren't run of the mill like cider vinegar, which isn't barrel aged, or a distilled white vinegar, which we're pretty familiar with those. But there's a lot of exciting things happening in the vinegar world right now. Vinegar is kind of having a moment, and it's super exciting.

Medicare's having a moment that only comes from someone who's immersed in the culinary world. Would you hear that? Okay, so when we've talked about olive oil in the past, I think you kind of scared me and a lot of other listeners when we talked about all the adulteration of olive oil and how five star Napa Valley restaurants are cutting it half and half with canola oil and how the olive oil you buy from the stores a lot of times rancid or old, or at least nothing near the flavor of like a good artisanal olive oil. Now talk to me about vinegar. Is it kind of a similar deal where when you buy vinegar at the store, sometimes you're not getting what you think you're getting? Are there things you need to consider when it comes to real versus, I suppose, whatever you call fake or adulterated vinegar?

Basically, there are lots of shortcuts you can make. Whenever you're focused on quantity over quality or industrial production, it equals an inferior product. So there's a lot of things that can happen in vinegar that is. For example, Balsamiq is one of those names that's on a label that automatically makes people pull more money out of their wallet. If you see that on a label, a lot of times you have to really read the back label because they can add caramel color or molasses to make it look like a thick, rich balsamic. So there are some fake balsamics on the market. So that's a slippery. You got to be a label reader. You know, obviously we're talking about barrel aged vinegars, and that's what I'm really focused on. And some producers, they take shortcuts and they actually soak wood chips in the vinegar instead of actually aging it in real wooden barrels. I'm obviously not a fan of added extracts or added flavors. We want to look for all natural flavors, which we get from amazing fruit. So we focus on the fruit.

Like I mentioned in the introduction, the word vinegar comes from the French word sour and wine. But it can be more than just grapes, right?

Absolutely, absolutely. Like we've got last year in this collection, I had amazing apple balsamic. This year I have a pear balsamic from Austria. That's just incredible.

Yeah, the pear stuff's amazing. By the way, I made an Australian barramunda fish last night with the pear vinegar and olive oil. So good.

Oh, man, that sounds incredible. Well, it's, it's, it's got this level of sweetness to it, and then also this acid that's really been nurtured over time in a barrel that's really just lets evaporation happen. So there's some, there's basically, there's a, there's a whole world of vinegar that opening up. Like, I'm a southerner and I grew up in Asheville, North Carolina. When I was a kid, there on my kitchen table was typically a bottle of vinegar. We use that for mostly on our greens. My grandmother made amazing bright collard greens. So we would put that on there as a natural flavor enhancer to also cut down some of the fat that was in there because she cooked them in a lot of fat back. She would make chow chow relish for topping our beans. So there's pickling that vinegars are used. And then also every summer, we would pick our chili peppers and make homemade hot sauce, which, if you think about hot sauce, the number one ingredient in hot sauce is vinegar.

Yeah.

So vinegar has this, you know, way of like opening your palate. So it's a really interesting product that we can explore. And then in culinary school, so I kind of grew up with those humble beginnings and just, just, you know, like a lot of people my age probably just enjoyed apple cider or white distilled. But then I started to move on in my culinary journey through culinary school and also through traveling around the world and really getting exposed to these artisanal vinegars, these barrel age vinegars. So this. Speaking of the south, there's a company in Virginia that's doing ramp vinegar now.

Ramp? You mean like the greens? The ramps?

Yeah, ramp, yes. Ramp infused vinegar. So there's some really interesting, you know, products that are, that are coming on the market, but whenever this happens, Ben, like olive oil, when it gets, like, everybody's getting excited about it, that's the time when the cheap junk tries to enter the market, the crappy stuff, and demand the same prices as the good stuff. So this is the time where you really have to get your listeners educated on, you know, reading labels and that sort of thing. So we can definitely go more into that. But on the road, as I told you, I was exploring all these cuisines, and these are the vinegars I was putting in my suitcase and bringing back to America. These were the vinegars when I was visiting the Christmas market in Germany, and I found this amazing pear balsamic. You know, that was. I got a bottle, I put it in my suitcase, you know, years later, fast forward a few years later. Now I'm working with that producer to actually produce it for members of my olive oil club. So, yeah, it's kind of full. Just kind of come around full circle at this point.

Okay, so I'm just curious, like, for you, logistically, how do you find. What do you call it, a farm or a vinegar producer? Like, how do you actually hunt them down? Is it just kind of knowing the right people?

I like to use this word that I've kind of coined, vinegar vintner, because making a beautiful barrel aged vinegar is like creating a very fine wine. So it's a lot of tasting Olive oil producers, since they do go hand in hand, recommend local vinegar producers. I also, I talk to local chefs. I meet foodie friends. Whether I'm in Australia or Chile or in Europe. I'm always exploring. You know, I'm sure. Are there things that you like to shop for when you're on the road? Are there foodie gifts that you. That you're like, oh, I'm always after the pistachio nuts or something like that.

That.

Not necessarily, but there's, like, places I go, like if I'm in Hawaii, like, usually coffee or macadamia nuts. If I'm in Japan, I like the little. I think they're just like little gluten bombs, but those. Those chewy little, like, candies that they have in, like, the Japanese candy stores. And then also I like some of. Some of, like the. The soy sauce type of marinades over in Japan. A lot of times when I travel, I also will just kind of like, dig into whatever the local place is known for. Like you mentioned Asheville, North Carolina, you know, total foodie city. And. And, you know, for me, sometimes I'll go get in line at, like, what's that? Biscuits and Gravy place down there, for example. So, yeah, biscuit head. So I'll go stand in line for an ungodly amount of time to try biscuits and gravy and then I'll like, I'll buy gift cards for people to those type of spots. So, yeah, I usually come back from any vacation with increasing frequency. It's hunting down whatever a cool local food is and bringing it back. Chocolate's another one that I'll do a lot of. But yeah, absolutely. For me, food pairs perfectly with travel.

Yeah, travel, adventure cuisines. And, you know, any time I travel, I like to go in the grocery store. That, that to me, I can go in grocery stores and I can understand cultures. Exactly. I want to understand, like, what parts of an animal are these folks eating? You know, like, I really can understand a lot. There's also a lot.

Awards. There's specialty food competitions around the world. So I kind of geek out on this with spreadsheets. I track the global award winners of specialty food competitions in the vinegar category. I also, you know, travel. I bring them home for the consumer. It's obviously not as easy. There are a few basic education points that I would like to share. We talked about fully reading the label. We talked about staying away from all artificial colors and extracts, because I don't like taking a cheap vinegar and then adding some type of extract to it and then put throwing it in a fancy bottle with a fancy label. So there's some of that going on. We don't. We want to stay away from that. You always want to look for a country of origin or a region of origin.

Oh, so similar to wine or olive oil.

Exactly, exactly. You want to understand the concept of terroir. Terroir refers to the microclimate, the soil. It's really understanding what that area imparts, what's special about that and what that imparts in the final product. Is it barrel aged? It may say barrel age for five years, et cetera. So look for barrel aged, if that's the style of vinegar you're shopping for. Was it produced on a single estate? Single estate versus, you know, mass company out there. Big, you know, brand also related to balsamic. And when we taste this balsamic, we can, we can really dive into that. But you want to purchase a real authentic Italian balsamic from Modena, Italy. From Modena, Italy, which is a region called. It's a city in Emilia Romagna, which is probably one of the best eating regions in Italy. It's got the trifecta of amazing ingredients you have Parma ham, you have balsamic vinegar, and you have Parmigiano Reggiano, all produced right there in that area of Emilia Romagna on top of Lambrusco. Great, great wine. So there's some really good stuff to look for. And so remembering that concept of where it's from, there are what are called controlled designations of origin. Those are referred to, like in France it would be called an aoc, or in Italy, a DOC or dop. Those are areas that are protected by the European Union. Kind of like champagne. You can't just make a California sparkling wine and label it champagne. No, there are international laws that actually protect certain products in the European Union, which is super cool. And then was it made with a quality fruit? Because like olive oil, starting with olives as a fruit, vinegar also has to start with a high quality fruit.

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So these additives, by the way, are we talking about like, I know coloring? The caramel coloring is an issue. A lot of people have a poor reaction to that. And then thickeners can cause some gut issues in people. What about GMO ingredients? Do they add a lot of GMO type of ingredients to some of the vinegars? As far as a vinegar additive, I'm.

Not aware of gmo. I'm aware of artificial color and artificial flavors. So like if someone buys a, let's say a strawberry vinegar, it may have a strawberry extract in it, not real strawberries or made with real strawberries. So I stay away from all, you know, the chemical produced stuff. And I try to go natural. Old world time, basically where time's involved and, and passion and care and love. Not the cheap route.

Okay, all right, got it. So as far as the actual different kinds of vinegars that are in the shipment that I got, I mean, like, a lot of people, like, I'm aware of white vinegar, which we use a lot for cleaning, but never mix that with bleach, by the way. That creates almost like a chloroform type of reaction. So be careful with that or hydrogen peroxide. But vinegar is great for cleaning. We use white vinegar a lot for cleaning. Cleaning. And then I've always been a fan of balsamic vinegar. Have always just used it in a very amateurish fashion, you know, drizzling over fish or on salads or whatever. And then typically, like an apple cider vinegar for either making like a. Like I do a clay mask once a week, and I'll mix the clay mask with the apple cider vinegar. My wife will use apple cider vinegar for a lot of her beauty treatments. And then, of course, that can be used medicinally or even, like I mentioned in the introduction, to take like. Like a shot of prior to a meal to lower the glycemic index of the meal. So you got white vinegar and balsamic vinegar and apple cider vinegar. I think those are probably like, the top three that a lot of people know about. But how many different kinds of vinegar are there?

There are a lot. Basically, anything that could be fermented, you can. Then as long as you could make alcohol out of something, you could literally do the second step of fermentation on and get. Get acetic acid.

Okay, this is the second step is when. Is when you mix the. When the acetic acid bacteria will transform the alcohol into acetic acid, and that's what makes the vinegar. That's like the secondary fermentation process.

Yes, that's the mother. So think of a mother as kind of like a sourdough starter. I know you're a big fan of sourdough, and you're probably going to be passing down to your children the sourdough starter that you guys have made. And your sourdough probably has a story behind it from, you know, coming from someone, you know, down the line. But the mother is this protected. Really, it's just cellulose, but it is a great bacteria. And this mother, over time, adapts and is used to increase flavor in the product. So the mother for each specific vinegar is very important to the final flavor. So, yes, that is something that's protected in this process. And basically the mother eats the alcohol that was in the fermented product, and then that creates the bacteria, which creates Acetic acid at different levels. Right. Because some of these vinegars that we're going to be tasting have higher levels of sugar in them, but also have higher levels of acid in them. So the two kind of balance each other out and kind of give you that sweet, tart taste that is so, you know, sought after. It's interesting. You could have, you know, different vinegars at different percentages and that's really cool. In your kitchen you want to have a assortment of things that are really tart all the way to the very extreme end, which is viscous and sweet.

Yeah. I actually want to get into how you would choose which one to use because that's something I'm still trying to decode. And maybe when we get in into tasting each of these vinegars, you can share like what you might use each one for. Because I'm actually really looking forward to this. I have this, this big box on my desk and it's got four different vinegars in it. And you know, I'm a member of the olive oil club and you just randomly started sending me this vinegar. But had I signed up for the actual membership, would this be something I'd get whatever, like three months or so? These like a shipment of four bottles.

It's actually one. It's not a club. It's a one time a year collection. Okay. So this summer I did a European road trip. A buddy of mine has a German, small Mercedes German motorhome and we did a road trip from Barcelona, up into France, across into Italy, then Austria, then Germany. And I curated this four bottle set and I did this so my club members would have a collection. Because vinegar can age and gets better with age. It's not like olive oil where I need to deliver it quarterly. I can deliver one set per year of four bottles and my members will have a whole culinary arsenal. Think of it as colors of paint and that they can use in their cooking. So that's what I tried to do when I made the four bottle set. I tried to have from bracingly acidic to fruit to very sweet. So it's kind of like one of those things that basically arms you for year ahead of vinegars because we don't use as much vinegar as we do olive oil. Most people use. Let's say you're, you're doing a vinaigrette. A vinaigrette is typically 3 parts oil to 1 part vinegar. So, you know, you don't go through it as quickly.

Speak for yourself. I'm going through it pretty fast.

Well, that's Good. That's good. I'll hook you up. I'll hook you up. So I curate X number of sets and I've never released them before for outside of my club members. So I've only offered them in the past to my club members. But you were so over the moon about them that this year on my, on my trip, I secured extra bottles to offer to your listeners. So that's, that's what I did this year. So you're the only one outside the club that can get access to it. The club's allotment that I had purchased for them is actually sold out at this point. So, yeah, we've got yours on reserve, so it's exciting, but that's the deal.

Sweet. All right, so lots of versatility here. I know it can be used for like deglazing and marinating. I mean, we put on ice cream once based on your suggestion. So we'll get into how you use each of these different kinds of vinegar shortly as we start into the tasting. But one thing I wanted to mention, people, is like the fresh pressed Olive Oil Club, you've got this really fantastic printout. There's like a 20 page printout. It's got about a dozen different recipes in it. It's got some of the science behind the vinegars. And then what I really love, maybe it's just because I'm a nerd when it comes to this stuff. I sit down and I read the story. You have like a two page story behind each farm and like, you know, pictures of you meeting with the different vintners and, and the pictures of the barrels and the area where it's grown. So it's really fun to, to get the, the print out along with it. I would encourage people to just to try this out once if you get a chance. So, so what I've got on my desk here, tj, just to paint a picture for you, is I've got this box. I haven't even taken these out of the box yet because I have a fresh box. Actually, you'd sent me a box like two months ago and I tried it. But this latest box arrived for the tasting that we're doing today. So this is all in the box. I've got one, two, three. I've got four shot glasses. So I'm going to take these out.

Of the box here.

So I've got my four shot glasses and I think you have what, an Austrian, a German, an Italian and what's the last one?

French.

The French. The French one, yeah. So where do we start? Man, I've never done this vinegar tasting before.

Yeah. So where you start, you need a little water because these are acidic. It's a little different than tasting olive oil. So I've got some of that water would be great.

I wish, I wish I had wine. But it's too early.

Yeah, it's too early. It'll interfere with this. Let's, we're, we're going to focus first on the Banyol's vinegar because it's the most acidic in the lineup. The Banyuls? Yes, the Banyul. So that's the French one.

Okay. And tell me about this one. How'd you find this one?

Probably 15 years ago, I was at a market in the south of France, a tailgate farmer's market, and there was a Benyuls producer there. And I tasted a Banyuls vinegar. And I'm familiar, pretty familiar with red wine vinegars across the board. But then there are, are very special red wine vinegars and this we classify as a very special red wine vinegar. It's not just red wine vinegar. So I tasted Benyols and when I was cooking, and this has been for the last decade, let's say, let's say I was making a French style salad that was with frise and had crispy bacon lardons and a poached egg on top and some croutons. Will all those are fatty, heavy items. I would use a very acidic vinegar and my go to vinegar for that purpose was the Banyols. It's got a lot of flavor for red wine vinegar. So I've been using it for a while.

Okay, all right, got it. What do we do first? I've got the bottle in front of me. I got shot glass here.

Yes, in your shot glass place, maybe a teaspoon. Because we don't need to go nuts. And what we're going to do, we're going to kind of move it closer to our nose. We're not going to get it really to kind of warm, warm ourselves up.

Okay.

And we're going to start smelling this vinegar which you, you, you perceive the acid, of course, in your nose and you, you start to see this for, for me, when you taste this, you can you smell earthiness and a little sweetness, just smelling at this point. These grapes were aged in barrels outdoors these for about three years for the wine making part of the process. This area is a UNESCO World heritage site for how these vineyards were planted. They've been planted on these terraced slopes where the Pyrenees meet. The Mediterranean. And they get very little rainfall there. And the soil is a sheist type of soil. These roots from these grapevines really have to work super hard in all these cracks and crevices to get water and survive the heat of summer and very little rainfall. So there's some struggle that happens in the grape production. And typically one of the main items of this area is a Banyul's wine, which is a fortified wine or a sweeter dessert style wine. We may get some hints of sweetness, but it's not going to be a sweet vinegar compared to the balsamic. But that's just a little bit of backstory on this.

And how long does a vinegar like this age for in the oak barrels?

Yes. So three years in the first part of the process out under the sun in a barrel. And that's the wine making process. And then it's brought inside, the mother is added, and then it's brought into a French oak barrel, a small French oak barrel where it sits for an additional three years somewhere around there. Okay. Every batch is different depending on where that barrel is stacked. Kind of in the Rick house. If it's higher in the house where you get more heat and winemaking call it the angel share. The evaporation that happens, the angels take more. If it's on the lower part of the, the barrel room, the vinegar cellar, you won't get as much evaporation. So it really. There. There is not like a hard and fast rule. That's why you have to have experts involved, like a great, like Joffrey at this. Who's the winemaker at this estate. He actually barrel selects. And then of course, I was there as well. So it's, it's a fun, it's a fun, really fun process. But so let's take a little bit of this vinegar. You know, whatever you're comfortable with. I don't want you to cough or choke. So just start really, really small. But we're talking about the nose. I get hints of brown butter on the nose. I get a little rose water, little.

Kind of like fennel, licorice.

Y type of aroma?

Yes, absolutely. Plums. Maybe some vanilla. Think about vanilla bean.

Yeah. Maybe just a little bit smoky.

Yes, absolutely. And that could come from the toasted oak in the barrels too, because that really imparts some flavor because they sit in for so much time. So let's take a little tiny sip of it.

Okay.

My palate's awake now. It's like my palate's awake.

I know we're Recording this at like 11:00am and the last meal I had was just like my morning superfood smoothie. So this is the, this is a shift. This is definitely a little bit more savory. Wow.

Yes. Yeah. So on the palate, it's acidic, yet there's a hint of sweetness. There's a fresh with notes of fennel, ginger, currants, toasted walnuts and raisins is what I had in my report. And really, I get a little taste of like a brown butter or a sherry vinegar. If I just let you know, as it kind of, you know, my palate kind of cleans there. So this one, I, I use this one in rich dishes where I balance out fattiness. So items like an antipasto salad, let's say antipasto salad, right? Where it's got provolone, it's got slice sliced prosciutto, it's got salami, pepperoni, all that sort of stuff in a big, hearty salad. Well, in that kind of salad, I have a lot of fatty ingredients going on. This is the ideal vinegar. It's going to cut directly through that fat and make that salad just so flavorful. I mean. Yeah, it's been, what, a minute since we tasted this, and it's still, like, going on. There's a little party going on in my taste buds. It's pretty incredible, no?

Yeah, yeah. It just keeps growing in the mouth. Now, the fact that it would pair really well with, like, a fatty meal. And, you know, one of the things I like to make, especially this time of year in the winter is like, traditional, like a French beef mornon stew where I'll, you know, I'll brown the cuts of, of stew meat in the bottom of a Dutch pot, typically with butter or bacon fat. But you could use something like this to kind of like, deglaze the, the pot or the pan beforehand. Right. To get all those caramelized bits in the bottom and make a little, little bit of a sauce.

You are exactly on the path. I would totally do this with beef bourguignon. It's a great, like, substitute for red wine. But also you can do the same thing with, say, the gola, the. The pear. My wife makes some pork chops, for example. She would sear some pork chops.

Oh, my gosh. I have, I have two beautiful bone in pork chops in the freezer. Keep, keep going. Keep, keep going.

All right, I'm going to set that up for you. We'll get back to that when we talk about golis, because I'M going to tell you more about that. But let's go, let's go a little bit further on this ban, y'. All. So this one I also use for quick pickling. So quick pickling is if you find onions and garlic really strong in your salad, like have some family members that are like, I don't want. It's too overpowering for my salad. Then what I do, I take a little of this vinegar that I'm going to be using to make my vinaigrette and I chop, finely chop. You could use shallots, you could use onion, you could use garlic. And you macerate those ingredients in a little vinegar. You do a vinegar soak on them. And so basically it's like pre blooming those ingredients in the vinegar. And then later in the process, you would add your other ingredients. Maybe some mustard or maybe some. And then your olive oil.

How long would I leave. Leave something like the, the chopped up onions or the garlic inside of vinegar.

Like this, depending on how big they are. I mean, you could go as little as 15 minutes and I don't know, as long as maybe an hour.

Yeah. So not that long.

No, not that long. But basically you're imparting the flavor. You're letting those flavors bloom in advance prior to adding your olive oil, mustard, herbs, et cetera. So this one for me is a quick pickling vinegar. It's got enough acidity to be able to pull that off. Some of these other ones, it's a little tougher to do that with. And like you said, deglazing. We talked about a wonderful layonnaise style salad with the crispy bacon and lardon. We talked about greens. You love salad. Obviously you could use that for that. Anything that would use like roquefort cheese or blue cheese would go beautifully with this. You could use it for a warm potato salad. In your intro, so you talked about the levels of carbohydrate, right?

The anti glycemic effect.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's. Yeah. So you're the science guy. But it's very interesting in a lot of cultures that vinegar is paired. For example, in a warm potato salad in Germany, they would pair that with vinegar. So you've got your acid there that's paired with potatoes.

I wonder.

Or obviously grilled vegetables. You could use it on cooked kale and other greens.

It'd be pretty good on an egg salad, too.

Yes, absolutely. Excellent marinade sauces. Deglaze a pan, it will brighten braises or stews and make quick pickled onions. Or other vegetables. So that was my list I had for you.

So that's the Beniols. I love it. Okay, all right, cool. This is awesome. Let's do the next one.

So next up, Ben, we're going to try the pear balsamic Balsamic vinegar. So this product, giving you a little history on this, this is one I discovered many years ago at the Christmas markets in Germany. I was tasting specialty food products there, and I found this vinegar producer who had an amazing line of vinegars. And I was like, balsamic? I'm skeptical. It's from Austria, not Italy. What's going on? On? Well, I started to dig a little deeper, and this producer actually was a schnapps producer. He was very familiar with making incredible Austrian brandies and whiskeys and that sort of thing. And he would use incredible fruit from his own vineyards, heirloom varieties of fruit, whether it was apple or pear or cherry, to make incredible schnapps. He vacationed in Modena, Italy. He tasted balsamic vinegar there made from grapes. And then he had this aha moment. He's like, I can do this at home. I have a bunch of apples, amazing heirloom apples that I can use this process, this balsamic process to make an incredible apple balsamic. So his first product was apple balsamic, which was in last year's collection. In this year's collection, it's the parrot balsamic. But just to give you a little context on that one. So let's, let's. This one is more drinkable. I'll say it's more drinkable than the first one. The acid is more integrated.

Definitely smells sweeter.

Yeah. Let's just take a smell of this one. So fruit based vinegar. You smell the pear in there right away?

Oh, yeah.

It's just got scent of like roasted pears. It's got notes of malt and caramel. It's got sweet berry jam, jam figs, I think chestnut honey, which is a very earthy honey. And also roasted chestnuts on the nose.

Compared to the. To the Banyuls, this is definitely less acidic. When we're talking about acidity, I think. What is like a 4 to 7% range that you find in these vinegars?

Yes, yes.

And so would this one be closer? Like 4?

This one because it's paired with the 5% acidity in this one. 5%. Banyol's is 6%. Yes. And so let's talk a little bit about how this is made. This producer, Gullis, he made this Trip. He's got these amazing old world varieties. He boils down pear juice as the first step, and then he actually ferments the pear juice. And then after that, introduces his mother. And then he places it in barrels and it's barrel aged for. For many years. He doesn't, you don't want to over age a pear balsamic because the, the pear flavor starts to dissipate. So his apple balsamic was an 8 to 10 year in barrel. This is closer to a 6, 4 to 6 years in barrel for this one. Just read the label. So we were going to look for that, you know, really nice pear flavor. I'm going to go ahead and take a sip. I can't wait any longer. So I'm going to take a little sip of this.

Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I'm already thinking of putting this one on like a vanilla ice cream. Wouldn't that be good?

Mmm, man, that's good.

Yeah.

So there's a slight earthiness reminiscent of vanilla pipe tobacco. I get this like vanilla pipe tobacco. I also get hints of cinnamon and grapefruit zest. I also taste stewed pears. I get delicate notes of vanilla, dried plums, caramel. There's a caramel starting to come.

Yeah.

The dark cherries, hazelnuts, orange marmalade and macadamia nuts. So those are what I said as the tasting notes on the palate. We were talking about pork before these pork chops you have in the fridge. So here's what I would do. I would sear my pork chops, however, you normally do that in a pan.

I find with these thick pork chops. I have the big pastured pork chops from US Wellness Meats. I really like their pork. Pork. I actually, I sous vide at about 140 degrees or so, usually about two and a half hours. And then I do my sear. But typically when I sous vide it, I'll have a little marinade in the sous vide bag. And so I'm even doing that before I get it out to the sear. But suppose I've sous vide it then. Then what would you do for the sear?

You could probably use a little of this in the, in the sous vide because it breaks down the protein and will give you. It'll actually tenderize. So meat vinegar you can actually use to tenderize meat.

In the past I've used for that sous vide. One of my favorites is a little apple cider vinegar with a Dijon mustard. But this would, I think this would be way better than the apple cider.

This will take it off the chart. So, okay, so when you're done searing it, take your pork chops out of the pan, Add a little grainy mustard or Dijon mustard, whatever you have. Then add a splash. Remove it from the heat, add a good heavy splash of the pear balsamic vinegar, and then let it reduce with the fatty richness of the pork. It's just gonna make an incredible sauce you really don't need. When you have really incredible ingredients. You don't need a million ingredients. It's pretty spectacular. Let's say you have some fresh thyme around, maybe pluck some fresh thyme at the end to put in the sauce. Sauce. But that's all you need. And a lot of people throw the best part of the dish away. They remove the food, and they don't deglaze the pan. That's called fond F O N D. And that fond is where your flavor is. So anytime you're. You're cooking a protein, remove the protein, add a splash of great vinegar, add a splash of wine, work it with a spatula, and you've got an instant sauce right on your hand. Hands with a lot of flavor.

Yeah, because you're getting all the caramelized bits in the bottom. And then that's like the fond. And then when you add the vinegar, that gives you your sauce. By the way, my wife and my sons are gone. Tomorrow night. I've got somebody coming over to do a little cranial sacral therapy on the back of my head for some tightness. And I'm literally going to go upstairs after that and have my own little pork chop party all by myself in my kitchen. It's going to be amazing. You've got my freshman Friday night planned out for me. Man, I'm looking forward to this.

I love it. Well, you know, you got incredible ingredients. It's going to be pretty spectacular. This one over bitter greens is fantastic. Like I said, stewed collards, that sort of thing. Mustard greens. That sweetness of the pear with mustard greens. Just a quick saute of baby mustard greens or even the super mix. We will do a quick saute on Supermix and then.

Wait, what's super mixed mix?

Super mix is like a. It's like, called super greens. I should have used the word super greens. It's like a. There's a package of. Of greens in the grocery store. It's usually near the salad spring mix, and it's called super greens. It's like baby, I think I know.

The one you're talking about.

Yeah, yeah. It's a real quick side dish. Right. If you were looking for like a one minute side dish, like heat a pan, throw in your super greens with some olive oil, little salt and then just kind of move them around, just gently cook them. You don't want to cook them until they are completely wilted. And then just finish it with a little bit of incredible pear vinegar or balsamic or calamansi depending on the dish. And you're going to have a pretty spectacular side in like less than five minutes.

Yeah. By the way, I'm going to up level your super greens recommendation because I have a, a lettuce grow out of my garage, which is a whole vertical vegetable growing unit. And so I order my seedlings from that and in the winter I can have like 20 different varietals of fresh greens. So right now I've got like a shisho leaf, I've got some thyme, some rosemary lettuce, kale, butter lettuce. And so I can go out there and just grab a whole collection of that and use that in this super greens recipe. So you ever seen one of those, those big vertical indoor grow systems?

They're very cool. They're very cool. I'm very jealous. I travel too much. I usually am on the road for olive oil about over 200 days of the year. So I don't have to maintain and eat those, those greens. But I'm sure some family members would help me out, like chiso. Really? You're growing your own chiso? Like I'm so, so jealous. Like, have you ever heard of a shrub cocktail before? Are you familiar with shrubs at all?

Yeah.

Basically a shrub for your listeners that don't know is a vinegar based cocktail and typically it is a macerated fruit. So step one would be taking some blueberries, some fresh blueberries or frozen blueberries and mixing them with some sugar and letting those macerate for, I don't know, 24 hours. And you can add simple syrup to it. Basically you're making a sweetened fruit juice. That's step one. Step two is you add vinegar such as this pear balsamic, which is incredible when you add it to blueberries and then you strain it at the end and then you use that with seltzer and crushed ice and maybe a few crushed blueberries or fresh blueberries as a garnish and maybe mint. It's like an incredible non alcoholic cocktail.

And for before a meal, again for the glycemic lowering component that's something I'll often do is if I'm at a restaurant, I'll order bitters over soda water or tonic water with a little bit of ice and a squeeze of lemon and so you get that glycemic lowering effect. But this is great. I'm going to try a shrub recipe. I haven't actually made a shrub cocktail at home, but you're right, I have all these fantastic vinegars now, so why not?

Now's your moment. And the pear balsamic, you just can take a splash of seltzer. Like you really don't. If you don't want to go through the shrub process, just get a nice seltzer, nice sparkling water and add the pear balsamic to it. It's a wonderful aperitif. It's just, you know, really, really fresh.

Lazy man's cocktail. I like it.

That's right. That's right. I do the same with the calamansi. And we'll get to that one in a minute. But the next one we're going to taste is the condimento, the aceto balsamico di Modena.

Oh, this is the balsamic.

This is the real deal. Italian balsam. Balsamic, yeah. So let me set this up for you because there's a lot of fakes as we talked about in balsamiq, it's a very complicated topic. Even me, as someone who's been to the region multiple times, Megan and I, we actually visited this producer and found his incredible barrel aged balsamics. On our honeymoon, we did a road trip and one of my, my favorite, you know, foodie spots in the world is Modena, Italy. For the reasons we've talked about, this producer makes an incredible balsamic. So there are different categories of balsamic. The most expensive comes in a very tiny bottle. It is basically boiled down grape must, which is grape juice that they, that they reduce and then it's added to what's called a battery of barrels. A battery of barrels is maybe like 10 barrels of different sizes. Maybe the first one holds 20 gallons, the last one maybe holds a liter. When you are born in that area into a family, typically a battery of barrels is started for your family for future generations. So people in this area, Emilia Modena, are very particular when it comes to vinegar. And the vinegar that's produced in this very small system, this closed cavity cast system with the sequence of barrels of different types of wood, cherry, oak, chestnut, because they impart different flavors. Essentially the process that happens is aging takes a lot of years it's 12 to 24 years to get a tiny bottle of vinegar. And it sells for like 200 bucks a bottle. So it can be really expensive. So it's too extravagant to use in vinaigrettes in your k. Too extravagant to, you know, really just use as kind of an everyday vinegar, which you could. The one I've produced. All right, so that's like what's called dop is that level that we were talking about, about 200 bucks for a very, very small bottle. You typically use it on strawberries, you would use it on risotto, that sort of thing. So that's step one. And then on the other end of the spectrum is igp. And IGP is another classification, and there are producer organizations in these regions that actually classify your products depending on the quality. So if I wanted to produce a DOP vinegar, I have to send a sample to the panel who has to certify it and say, yes, you're approved. You can sell that. So that was not accessible to my club members, so I. I stayed away from that. I went with kind of a hybrid which is called condimento. You'll notice the word condimento on the top of the bottle.

Yeah, I saw that.

This condimento category. So there's dop, there's igp, and then there's condimento. Condimento gives the producers the flexibility to try to make a vinegar that has a very similar flavor and texture to a really amazing DOP without taking 12 to 24 years or longer.

OK.

So that's why I chose to use a condimento, because in my kitchen, I like to use balsamic as a sweetener in vinaigrettes. Like, I would typically do a blend. If I were making a vinaigrette for a salad, I would blend a little bit of the balsamic with a little bit of the banyols, because I want that acidity, but I also want that sweetness in there as well. So when I have my olive oil in my stall, I've just got this incredible trifecta for my green. So that's the. You know, that's what I would do.

So you're so impatient. You don't want to wait 25 years for the IGP.

Yeah, I mean, it would make. You would be too coveted. Right. It'd be one of those things you leave in your pantry and not touch.

Too fine to drink.

Yeah, it's too fine. It's too fine. So this is. This was like the perfect medium, and I just had to Find the right producer that would help me get to the flavor profile that I wanted to get, which meant leaving it in barrels longer. Meant using a mixture of barrels. I've got Terry. I've got chestnut. These varieties of fruit wood in these barrels add to the complexity of flavor. As the evaporation happens inside the barrel, you get this viscosity that happens and the rounding of flavor and the integration of the grape must, which is pretty thick, and the vinegar working together. So let's take a smell of this one. You'll notice right away how thick and viscous it is. It was made with Lambrusco and Trebbiano grapes. Those are the only two grapes that can be used. Make a real Italian balsamic. There's a balance of acidity, sweetness from the grape musk, and the woodiness of the barrel aging. This one was in cherry barrels for more than two years, and it's very much made like a cuvet or a fine wine blending a fine wine. So let's do a smell test.

Oh, my gosh.

So good.

So good. All right. I get pruned. I get dried figs. I get sweet, dark cherries. Especially, like dried, sweet, dark cherries. I get dark chocolate. I get hints of vanilla, caramel, and toasted oak. So I'm getting all these items off the nose. Do you get anything else there or anything stand out to you?

I definitely get, like, that, you know, that small, dark berry type of aroma from it. Maybe a little bit of, like a. Like a raisin or a. Or a honey. Yeah. And that might just be sweet. Absolutely, yeah. I would say little. Little raisin, a little honey.

Absolutely. Like a dark honey. Like a rich, dark honey. Yeah. Or raisins. I totally get that.

I mean, I could even drizzle this on, like, oatmeal in the morning. I mean, this is amazing because usually you put things like that in oatmeal. Yellow raisins, a little honey. My sons have oatmeal a lot of mornings or some blueberries. And so you could totally use something like this even for that.

I love that idea. This is like a balsamic lollipop or something. I've got a. I've already. I've already raced ahead like. Like a Tootsie Roll or something. It's like a cherry Tootsie Roll. That's crazy.

What kind of recipes do you like to use this in?

So for me, I love that it's thick, tangy, velvety. I love that. All the taste in there, from the dark honey to the plums. I think it pairs beautifully with cocktails. We talked about shrubs making shrubs for me. I like I said, I usually blend it with other vinegars. I don't like my salad super sweet, so I use a blend of the bench and the balsamic. You are a huge fan of organ meats and wild game.

Yeah.

This one is incredible with wild boar.

Wait, with wild what?

Wild boar or venison? Yes, venison, especially. Think about this one as. Or lamb. If you were doing a rack of lamb and that rack of lamb comes out of the oven and you, you slice it up on a, and place it on a platter and you drizzle a little bit of balsamic, think about how that acid is going to just bring that roasted rack of lamb alive.

It would honestly be really nice on even, Even like a lot of times I'll do a thin sliced liver or heart and a lot of times I'll dredge it with egg and coconut flour and some spices and then fry it up with a little bit of olive oil. But I could even try almost very similar to like a sous vide because I'll do that sometimes with the organ mix meats, but I don't know if I'd need to bread it and fry it so much. If I had something like this, I might actually see how that pairs like a balsamic, a fine balsamic like this with an organ meat. It could actually be pretty good.

I think it's going to really, really work for me. It's as simple as drizzling it over prosciutto, goat cheese or figs. As a first course, you could pour it over vanilla ice cream with strawberries for dessert. I mean, there's really. Basically, it's limitless, right? It's kind of like with the olive oil, you choose your adventure, you choose your fun, but basically whatever you're cooking, this takes it to the next level. So that's like the goal and kind of gets you reinvigorated in the kitchen.

I love this. Of course, I love balsamic in general, but man, so many places I could go with this one. Wow. And that's really cool to know that. I mean, you're getting the quality of a multi hundred dollar bottle of a dop. But man, for people who might not be able to afford that or want to see what something like that would taste like and not have, you know, the guilt factor over actually consuming it once you have in your pantry. Wow, I really like this. You've got like, man, it's fancy it's got the lot number on the bottle and everything. Wow. And again, like, when you look at the ingredients, there aren't additives just as cooked grape. What's grape must.

So it's cooked down complete grapes. So they just play place the. They harvest the grapes, they. They destem them. They put them in a cauldron, and they. They're. I use the word boil. Boil, but they don't boil. It's a very slow process. They want very little evaporation. So, yeah, that's. That's cooked down grape juice, essentially, but it's the whole fruit. Two. Two actual grape varieties, the Lambrusco and the Trebbiano grapes used there. That's also used in Lambrusco. Wow.

Amazing.

All right, so the next. Next one.

Okay, last one. Here we go.

Yes. So, okay, this one. Shake it a little bit. You want to shake it a little bit.

This is the column. Calamasi.

Calamansi. Calamansi. Now, this one is totally out of left field. Okay. So this. You know, I've been talking about barrel aged. I've been talking about dop. I've been talking about, you know, wine making and all this stuff. All right. This one is really outside of that field. And it was very hard for me to include something in my collection that was kind of outside my. My normal range, but I fell in love with this vinegar. My wife has been using calamansi. Megan has been using Calamansi vinegar in our kitchen for a long time.

And Calamansi is a fruit?

Absolutely, yes. Let me give you some background on that. It's a Filipino fruit. This is a fair trade product. It's a Calamansi fruit pulp. And the Calamansi fruit itself is kind of like a cross between a kumquat and a.

To me, it also has a lot of yuzu kind of flavor, so you'll taste like. I don't know. It's a really interesting style of vinegar. So this vinegar I call a cocktail style vinegar. And. But there's no real barrel aging that takes place. It's amazing vinegar that. It started with a brandy vinegar, just a pretty simple brandy vinegar vinegar. And then a Calamansi pulp is actually juice is added to create. And a little bit of cane sugar, Fair trade cane sugar, to kind of round it out a little bit.

Honestly, like. Don't laugh, but. But initially, it's almost got like this kind of like Sprite, Mountain Dew type of soda aroma to it. Probably. Probably because of, like, the orange citrusy nature of the Calamansi. So, yeah, it almost smells like a soda. Like, honestly, I could add, add some of this to just like some Pellegrino or Perrier and automatically have like a nice little like homemade soda, some of that shrub cocktail we were talking about. But yeah, I get a lot of that. It's very, very fresh. Like kind of like lemon, orange, lime. You know, you mentioned yuzu, probably a little, little bit of that and then like a tangerine.

Yeah, yeah, no, I totally, I totally get it. So I say on the nose, yuzu, mandarin orange, lemon, lime, fresh ginger. I smell lemongrass. I get a little lemon verbena or like a lemon candle or lime leaf. I kind of get the, the aroma of lime leaves as well. I say we take a little sip of this one because like I said, it's a cocktail style, Cocktail style vinegar. So let me take a little sip. I can't wait any longer.

This is so good.

Wow. There's that burst of sweetness that gives way to a citrusy kind of taste tingle. You'll taste hints of sour orange, key limes, yuzu, florals like jasmine. You'll get herbal notes like chamomile and lavender. You'll get orange blossom, honey, kumquat and tangerine on the palette. Man, that's so good.

That is really good. I mean, like, oh, man. Yeah. Just give me some sparkling water and some ice and I could just suck this down all day long. Amazing. You ever had vinegar? We talk about adding vinegar to olive oil. You ever add it to wine?

No, I've not tried that.

Just curious, you know, almost like, like a sangria type of thing.

Yeah, I was going to say maybe with the calamansi I could do that with a. Something that's maybe a little sweeter white, you know, to kind of balance it. But yeah, I could totally. So this one honestly, you could use for any recipe that calls for lemon or lime. Like, I love it in salt.

Salsa.

I love it. Guacamole. I've made a lemon cake with it. I've made lemon curd.

Oh, yeah.

I've made entrees like chicken piccata. Very simple dish for like fast recipes. Salmon, you could, you could do herbs and garlic and this on, on salmon. I was even thinking about ceviche or crudite.

You're right. Yeah, it would be especially with that citrusy. I have a sashimi grade fish. All these delivery services, I have a hard time keeping track. Sashimi grade fish, a service called seatopia. I get sashimi grade fish delivered to my house once a month and a lot of it, of course. It's such high quality, clean fish. You can do a ceviche with it. Yeah, this would be really, really good. A little salt, a little lime, and add some of this vinegar to it. Yeah, that's a great idea.

Yeah. Tuna tataki. I've been thinking about mixing it with some soy sauce and making tuna tataki would be great. Great. All of these vinegars, when you start roasting, let's say, root vegetables in your kitchen, when you pull that out of the oven and you put it on the side, can you imagine drizzling that with a little bit of one of these balsamics or a little bit of the calamansi and tossing it around in the roasting pan before you give it its final seasoning, final herbs and putting it in the serving bowl. So there's this flavors of fat, acid, and salt, and you need to learn to balance those things. And one of the mistakes I see people making most is not tasting while they're cooking. It's very important. Part of the process is have a spoon. You want to taste things before you place them on your table. So please, you know, take the time and adjust those elements. Does it need extra fresh olive oil? Does it need a little hint of acid? Does it need a little salt? And in salt land, we could talk there, you know, is it salt of different textures? I'm sure you've used flaky sea salt from Europe or the Kalima salt.

Yeah, I love the colima.

They're different. Yeah. So there's. There's, like, you know, learning to kind of modulate those. Those three items will really just take your cooking to an entirely new level. What's the. The Japanese green that you're growing?

Oh, the shiso.

Shiso. Shiso. I want you to take some shiso and put it in the bottom of a cocktail glass. I want you to add a little calamansi vinegar to it. I want you to microwave, muddle it using, you know, a small muddling tool, or macerate it. But shiso in cocktails is fantastic.

Yeah, well, it's very similar to mint. So you'd almost get like, a little bit of, like, a mojito effect.

Exactly. But calamansi shiso can imagine that with a little crushed ice and a little seltzer on top. Like, oh, my gosh, you're gonna be in heaven.

Oh, I'm gonna. I'm gonna make my wife one of those tonight. She likes mojitos. I'm gonna make her a shiso co calamansi mojito That's a great idea.

There's just so many cool directions you can go with this. It's really cool to have this in your culinary arsenal. It goes perfectly. My club members were basically begging me. They were writing me all the time, what vinegar do you recommend? And I could not really make a good recommendation. There wasn't one that I was like, I could get my, you know, support behind. So I was really happy to be able to, you know, collect, collect and basically curate this collection of what I would typically put in my suitcase to bring home from my European road trips. That's kind of what kind of got this whole thing going.

This is so fun. And as you guys can hear, it's just, it opens you up to this whole new culinary universe. And especially. And I'll put this in the show notes if you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com Vinegar podcast or you could just go to GreenfieldPantry.com because TJ made us a special URL is you can get the olive oil if you want to try the olive oils, which I recommend, recommend to go on with the vinegars if your pocketbook permits. But man, I mean, if you already have tasted olive oils or you find the concept of olive oil kind of old news, this calamansi particularly, like, man, just try a little bit of it. It's amazing. It's like right around a little under $100 to get like all four bottles, right?

Yes, it's four bottles for 98 bucks. It's a one time thing. It's not a quarterly selection. It's only the one collection. It comes with the pressing report you talked about, which is filled with recipes, all my pictures from. We talked about a picture of the producers in the Philippines who actually grow the calamansi fruit for this German producer who makes this incredible calamansi vinegar. It's a fun and culinary adventure. We'd love to have you come along.

All right, so tomorrow night it's going to be the pork chop with the pear balsamic and a little, little bit of a deglaze after the, the final sear. And I'm probably going to do just like a real basic, like onions, garlic, maybe a little bit salt of squash. And then it's going to be a shrub style cocktail or else one of these calamansi mojitos and I'll probably drag out like a little bit of like a coconut vanilla ice cream, put a little balsamic on top of it. And I think, I think we got dinner planned for tomorrow night. You Want to come join? Hop on a plane?

I think you do. I would be there. Man, that sounds incredible. Every course has vinegar in it. It's incredible. You know, it's like there's no limits when it comes to this stuff, which is super cool.

Awesome, man. Well, this has been a pleasure. I. I have to say this is the first time I've drank this much vinegar at my desk in the morning. I have no regrets at all. This is amazing. So again, folks, I'm going to put all the links@greenfieldpantry.com or also@bengreenfieldlife.com vinegar podcast. You can leave your comments, your questions, your feedback over there. And tj, thank you once again for taking my palate for a wild roller coaster to ride and for going out and hunting all this stuff down.

It's my pleasure. Thank you so much for your support. Means so much.

All right, folks, I'm Ben Greenfield, along with TJ Robinson, the olive oil slash vinegar hunter. Sign out from BenGreenfieldLife.com have an amazing week. All right, you may have heard the rumblings about this event as actually happening, so get out your calendar. March 10th through the 12th. March 10th through the 12nd, 2023. Of course, course. I am doing a big event in the hotspot of Sedona, Arizona. If you haven't been to Sedona, it's amazing. The hiking is amazing, the food is amazing, the energy is amazing. And my friend, two time former podcast guest and an amazing expert in breath, work and self discovery in movement and all the cool things that happen as far as like body, mind, spirit connection down there. Sedona is putting on an event, her grand opening event at this place called Shine in Sedona. And I'm going to be there giving a keynote talk, teaching you all about breath, work and biohacking. But that's not all. She has so many experts coming in. We have a freaking cacao ceremony. If you've never done a cacao ceremony, it's drinking really good chocolate in a very ceremonial way. You're going to love it. They got mind body reset sessions using quantum energetic technologies, infrared rays, negative ion therapy, crystals, these special mats that you lay on as you do special forms of breath work.

They've got a heart expansion coaching session.

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More than ever these days. People like you and me need a fresh, entertaining, well informed and often outside the box approach to discovering the health and happiness and hope that we all crave. So I hope I've been able to do that for you on this episode today. And if you liked it, or if you love what I'm up to, then please leave me a review on your preferred podcast listening channel, wherever that might be, and just find the Ben Greenfield Life episode. Say something nice. Thanks so much. Means a lot.