Food Crimes - Offenses against nutrition

Not aged, DOP balsamic. And I specified the aged balsamic in my comment.

That stuff is aged in barrels until it's a thick, syrupy bit of heaven. A minimum of 25 years to meet the DOP standards.

The IGP standard for balsamic is less stringent, and it is cheaper, but you still aren't paying 1 euro for it anywhere that I could find online. It's more like 5 or 6 euro. It's essentially the same as the cheaper stuff; grape must added to other vinegar, but processed in Modena.

Here in the US a decent IGP balsamic is closer to 25 USD.

The cheapest aged balsamic I can get here is 35 a bottle, and it isn't DOP, it's made here in the states, and isn't aged as long; it goes 12 years. The DOP stuff can actually end up over 100 here by the time all the costs of it getting here get involved. And they're small bottles compared to the U.S. made aged stuff.

This is a decent IGP balsamic on us amazon

And here's a DOP that's supposedly amazing, but way outside my budget, so I'll never know

And this is just "balsamic" with no standard applied at all

I don't know if the listings there includes an ingredient list at all, but the pompeian is just cheap wine vinegar with some grape must and coloring added. It just isn't made in Italy at all, much less Modena.

And there is a major difference in taste, texture, and thickness between IGP and DOP, even on the cheapest DOP available here in the US (about 35 bucks, so not different in price grin the us made stuff). There's only minor taste difference between IGP and the typical stuff on grocery store shelves here. And I suspect that is down to the vinegar used as the base.

Aged DOP, or the equivalent regardless of where it's made, you treat it like the luxury it is. You put drops of it on things because that's all you need. You don't cook it at all because it destroys the flavor.

The process of aging the stuff is slow. You start the batch off in a big barrel. After a time,,a few years, the wood has sucked out water and imparted its own flavors. They'll then move it to a smaller barrel where it sits and gets further reduced and aged. By the time it's done, the original amount is down to a gallon or so, depending on exactly how the maker does things. That is then bottled.

So, it's a labor intensive, time consuming process. Even the least expensive stuff that's only aged 12 years or so that isn't DOP still represents a buttload of resources. You aren't going to find that for 1 euro. Even if it cost so little to make they could sell it for that, they wouldn't.