News

Giordano Venturi, a bricklayer's son, was too poor to taste the balsamic vinegar that made his native region of Italy famous. That is, until he reached his mid-30s and recognized potential - and a little bit of home - in an unlikely, faraway place: Canada.

Today, Mr. Venturi produces balsamic vinegar at his 17-acre vineyard in Cobble Hill, a farming village on Vancouver Island surrounded by forested hills, dairy cattle, artists and aging hippies - hardly an area you'd expect to find one of Italy's most revered traditions.

But Venturi-Schulze vinegar, which takes between six and 12 years to produce from grape to bottle, is created using centuries-old methods from Modena, where a bottle of balsamic vinegar can cost up to $300.

Mr. Venturi doesn't use any of the short-cut ingredients found at virtually every North American vinegary, such as wine, grape juice concentrate, and licorice or caramel for colouring.

His vinegar is increasingly making its way into Canadian kitchens, largely because of the environmentally conscious trend toward eating locally, and the rise of gourmet foodies who don't mind paying $49 for a 250-millilitre bottle. Last year, 2,000 bottles were sold from his farmhouse, up from 400 four years ago.

The vinegar has also earned a bit of a following among some of Canada's gourmet chefs, who can be so enamoured with its light, fruity taste that they tend to gush. "I can use it like perfume on a beautiful woman," says Bruno Feldeisen, head chef at Toronto's Senses restaurant, who drizzles it on fresh mozzarella.

Mr. Venturi, however, is pretty sure his former countrymen don't see his product the same way.

"Stealing secrets and taking it somewhere abroad?" Mr. Venturi says with a chuckle. "That is something despicable."

Mr. Venturi immigrated to Canada in 1977 at age 26. He met his future wife, Marilyn Schulze, at the University of Montreal in 1986, and soon the couple moved to Coquitlam, B.C., where they both taught school.

A year later, the couple took a trip to Vancouver Island and discovered Cobble Hill. They also saw the geographic qualities that have since earned the area the nickname "Napa north" - hills, clay soil and a temperate climate. Within two months, they had bought their farm, planned a vineyard on five acres and given notice to their bosses. They made their first wines in 1991, and added vinegar operations a few years later.

Today Ms. Venturi, a trained microbiologist, takes care of the business while her daughter, Michelle Schulze, manages fields that are devoid of herbicides and pesticides and produce numerous different wines.

"This is my domain," Mr. Venturi announced on recent a tour of the vinegary, a cool, temperature-controlled room lined with almost 60 wooden barrels.

Mr. Venturi says he feels decades younger than his 66 years, and looks it with his tanned, muscular legs and a ponytail poking from under a faded baseball cap. Every morning he runs seven times around his vineyard, a distance of almost 10 kilometres.

After the grapes are pressed and the juice simmers, reduces and cools, it is transferred into large nursery barrels, where it will sit for at least four years to allow the "vinegar bugs" - Mr. Venturi's term for yeast and bacteria - to do their work.

More aging and evaporation takes place in smaller barrels, which are custom-made in Italy from chestnut, cherry, acacia, ash and oak.

What evaporates each year from the oldest and smallest barrel is replaced by vinegar from the next barrel (a year younger and a little larger) in the series. Over the years, the vinegar becomes sweeter, denser and more complex as it picks up the wood characteristics of each barrel.

Immigrants like Mr. Venturi are pushing the boundaries of what's possible to produce in Canada, says James MacKinnon, co-author of The 100-Mile Diet, a book chronicling the year he and his partner, Alisa Smith, spent eating food produced within a 160-kilometre radius of their Vancouver home.

"Some of the most exciting stuff is being done by immigrants," he says. He cites soybeans on the Lower Mainland and Mayan greens such as amaranth and yerba mora being pioneered by Latin Americans.

"They're taking a look at this landscape and saying, 'Oh, that reminds me of the place that I came from in China ... or the Mediterranean,' " Mr. McKinnon says. "They're trying their familiar foods and discovering that, in many cases, they play out just fine."

And while Mr. Venturi is proud of the tradition his vinegar represents, he is not afraid to try something new. His latest experiment is a balsamic vinegar infused with some of Quebec's finest maple syrup.

"You can't get more Canadian than this!" he says.