The Vinegar cellar

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The Matildis vinegar cellar covers a total surface area of 130 square metres, divided into three environments. It was designed with the aim of using a nineteenth-century cellar.

The project was conceived in such a way as to integrate the original room, with a barrel vault of exposed brickwork, with new extensions suitable for storing and ageing the batteries of Eufonico® Balsamic Vinegar.

The largest room (70 m²) is intended for batteries containing a maturing product about 9 years old, containing product started in 2013, while the 40 m² room is for the oldest batteries, 21 and 35 years old, and for particular batteries, such as those made of juniper wood, which currently hold a maturing product that is about 9 years old. The 20 m² room is used for storing the finished bottled product, packed and ready for despatch.

The restructuring work required the use of innovative materials, to guarantee water impermeability and a constant and continuous circulation of natural air, for favouring acetification and avoiding the formation of mould.

The vinegar cellar is currently composed of 350 casks: 50 batteries of 5, 6 or 7 casks each and 30 barriques with a capacity between 80 and 225 litres. The batteries with the maturing product 9 years old and the batteries started in 2013 are composed of 6 casks each and are arranged in a rational and orderly fashion on wooden shelves. The shelves were specially designed and built by hand using marine plywood, to ensure non-deformability by liquids and easy cleaning. The oldest batteries of 5 and 7 casks are kept in the smallest room, set on the floor on special wood or iron supports. The operations of topping up the maturing and starting batteries are carried out taking the product from 14 oak barriques with a capacity of 225 litres, kept in the largest room in the cellar. The other 16 barriques, of different sizes and used to fill the oldest batteries, are laid on special supports and kept in the smallest room in the cellar.

Air circulation and ventilation is guaranteed in all rooms, thus avoiding the formation of mould on the wood of the casks and allowing the chemical-physical transformations of the product, since the vinegar cellar has been designed and made in a completely innovative way, underground, like the old cellars for storing wine, using innovative materials and particular windows for the exchange of air with the outside, enabling temperatures of around 2°C-3°C to be obtained in winter and around 24°C-28°C in summer. These temperatures allow an ideal progress of the ageing process of balsamic products, since the acetobacters and yeasts work more slowly in summer and stop in winter, with greater settling of the product.

Matildis is therefore an innovative vinegar cellar both for the areas where the batteries of Eufonico® Balsamic Vinegar are stored and aged, for the instruments used in the laboratory located in the smallest room in the cellar, and for the control of the maturing and ageing process of Eufonico® Balsamic Vinegar.