Category Archives: vinegar

Get Your Modena Running

Posted on by under Europe, food producers, Southern Europe, vinegar

Fast cars, fat singers, fine food and fizzy Lambrusco, in Modena you get to experience it all.

Ferrari California in Marranelo

Man and Machine

‘Push! Push! Push!’, cries the man in the passenger seat and so I obligingly push down hard on the accelerator. The bright red Ferrari California makes a noise like Pavarotti getting his fingers caught in a door and £160,000 worth of supercar hurls itself forward as I frantically work the paddle gear change to keep up. The speedo needle rushes toward the motorway limit and then past it, but it isn’t even a fifth of the way around its elegant dial yet.

‘Piano, piano,’ ‘gently, gently’, advises my Italian co-pilot as the rear of a giant lorry suddenly fills the windscreen, so I let off the pedal, dab the brakes and the car majestically slows down as if a giant hand has grasped it.  Continue reading →

Sharp and sweet. The vinegars of La Guinelle

Posted on by under Europe, Southern Europe, vinegar

Foodies talk a lot about balsamic vinegar and its amazingness, but in the South of France I find an artisan making something a drop more interesting and rare
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‘You need good wine to make good vinegar,’ says Nathalie gazing watchfully over her militarily ranked wooden casks. The south of France sun is beating down on the covers that shade the casks from the full heat, her dog is flopped out on the road outside. It’s too hot to do much. Time moves slowly here. Continue reading →