“If you think BALSAMIC is as good as it gets...
Let me introduce you to REAL vinegar!

The Key to the Most Delicious Salads You
and Your Guests Will Ever Taste!”

Dear Foodie Friend,

I’ll never forget a night in Napa Valley in the early 1980s—the night that Donn Chappellet, one of California’s legendary winemakers, invited me to his house for dinner.

Everything about this grand evening was spectacular—the warmth, the remarkable dinner-party skills of Donn’s wife Molly, the great California food from the grill. And...of course...the wines. Donn not only poured numerous vintages of his own historic Cabernets for us, but he raided his considerable wine-cellar collection of top Bordeaux and Burgundy bottles to make us happy.

We truly, truly were.

But just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, Donn leaned over and asked me if I would like to go downstairs with him to his “pride and joy.” Sure, I thought...even more wine! The really big bottle! Perhaps the 1969 Chappellet Cabernet Sauvignon, the one that had recently set a record for most expensive California wine ever sold at auction!

When we arrived in the cellar, we entered a room that had only one thing in it: a fairly small barrel. I was confused. Donn walked me over, and, with a radiant smile on his face, pulled the bung from the bunghole. “Smell that,” he said. I knew right away it wasn’t wine...because the aroma was more complex than the aroma of wine, even of the aromas we’d been sniffing that splendid evening. This had a wild, fruity-jammy character, mixed with an old, old, old character, even beyond the classic “cured leather,” “sweaty saddle,” and “aged cigar box” of the greatest old reds.

“What the hell is this?” I asked.

“It’s vinegar,” said Donn. “Red-wine vinegar.” And I knew my life had changed.

I encounter “the mother of all mothers”

When we brought a tiny quantity upstairs, and used it to make a palate-clearing salad before dessert, I was astonished. This was one of the greatest, most evocative things I’d ever tasted—and though I’d been making salad with vinegar all my life, I had never experienced anything like this before.

So of course we spent the rest of the night talking about vinegar. Donn had obtained a vinegar starter—a blobby, plasma-like mass that vinegar pros call “the mother”—from a restaurant in San Francisco called Swan Oyster Depot, a place that has been making vinegar for a long time. I’ll say! This “mother” came from a batch of vinegar that had been started in the 19th century...and survived the earthquake of 1906! This was the mother of all mothers.

I could not imagine vinegar this bewitchingly complex

Donn decided to make the most of this mother and, for years, had been pouring wine over it in his basement barrel—which is how a “mother” gives birth to more vinegar. But not just any wine. Donn demonstrated his technique by scooping up what was left of the Grand Cru Burgundies, First Growth Bordeaux, and Chappellet Cabernets on the dining table, walking them downstairs...and pouring them into the vinegar barrel! Can you imagine what kind of wine that barrel has seen? Until I tasted this brew, I could not imagine vinegar this bewitchingly complex.

When I left his house that night, I had great vinegar hopes—because, now that I knew what heights vinegar could reach, I assumed it was just a matter of time before the food world discovered vinegar like this, before it became the next generally available foodie obsession.

I was wrong. I failed to take one factor into account—a factor that threw the distribution of mind-blowing vinegar off the tracks to this very day!!!

And that factor is...balsamic vinegar!

At about the same time as my Chappellet tasting, aceto balsamico from Modena exploded onto the foodie scene. I confess; I was one of the guilty ones who helped bring it to public attention. Intrigued by its “mythology,” I wrote a story about balsamic vinegar and sold it to Gourmet magazine, my first-ever food-story sale. A few years later, after the owners of the food emporium Dean & DeLuca virtually flooded the country with this stuff—I wrote “The Dean & DeLuca Cookbook,” which included a number of recipes using balsamic vinegar. Through the efforts of many, many people in the 1980s and 1990s, balsamic vinegar became the “it” condiment, the cool thing to buy at your gourmet grocery store, and the essential thing to use on your salads.

But there were three unforeseen consequences...

One was the misuse, indeed the overuse, of balsamic vinegar in America. In Modena, it had been used most widely as an historic sprinkle for fruit, particularly strawberries. Also, Emilian-Romagnan chefs had long liked to build sauces with it—sauces that go best with dark meats, such as liver, and foie gras, and game. Things didn’t develop that way in kitchens over here. Americans heard the word “vinegar,” and assumed that its chief usage was in salad. When they tasted it—they loved the salad idea, because balsamic vinegar is sweet! It is very hard for many Americans to turn down an upgrade—in this case salad dressing—when the upgrade is sweeter than what came before it. Woo-hoo!—went the sentiment; “We can now have tossed salad that’s sweet and sanctioned by gourmets!”

The Italians went nuts

But then problem #2 came up...

Fueled by the American desire to use balsamic vinegar practically every day, the industry in Italy went nuts. Once upon a time, they only needed to create a few dribbles of this stuff per year. Suddenly, they were forced to pump out oceans of it. You can imagine what happened: The percentage of truly great balsamic vinegar plummeted from something like 100% to something like 5%—and the stuff that was really great rose in price, becoming hideously expensive. The $4 bottle at your supermarket? Made in an industrial way, with caramel added, having nothing of the charm or subtlety or complexity of the real stuff.

To me, dousing your salad with cheap, sweet balsamic vinegar
is like pouring pineapple juice all over your greens!

When I finally realized that I could barely order a salad any longer in a restaurant without somebody pouring cheap balsamic vinegar over it—I think it’s like pouring pineapple juice on your greens—I started going out of my way to avoid “balsamic” vinaigrette. A man’s home is his castello, and I assumed I was protected in my own four walls, because there I could use any vinegar I liked. I could preserve the great European tradition of pouring tart, complex vinegar on my salads, keeping them lively and interesting. I could track down Chappellet-style vinegar and make myself happy with that.

But, alas, that’s when problem #3 came crashing down on my head...

The “industry” is certain that what Americans want is balsamic vinegar. So a great deal of the “gourmet” vinegar importation and distribution today focuses on...you guessed it....balsamic vinegar!

Had this thing not come along in the 1980s, vinegar in America would have taken a different path—a path towards ever greater complexity, refinement, a path towards Chappellet-type vinegar brilliance. But that movement got stopped in its tracks by the balsamic bulwark!

How do I know? Because I’ve been searching for years for top-quality non-balsamic vinegar in America, trying to match the thrills I knew at the home of Donn Chappellet in 1983.

Finally, I decided to do something about it. Sure, I’ve been tasting the kind of Chappellet-like vinegar I love over the years—but on the road only, mostly in Europe, in regions where the great non-balsamic traditions of vinegar are maintained! And...having found that my Rosengarten Report readers are so willing to follow my instincts when it comes to olive oil, when it comes to wine, and to many other things...I decided to take the risk.

Announcing the David Rosengarten Real Vinegar Club

I would like to announce the formation of the David Rosengarten Real Vinegar Club, dedicated to the greatest, most delectable, most meal-stopping, ovation-inducing vinegars on the face of the earth that are not balsamic vinegar!

Instead, these will be vinegars that you can use with real pride and delight every day—in your simple green salads, in your more complicated salads, even as the secret ingredients in sauces and marinades.

Four times a year, members will receive two different vinegars, each one in a 250-ml bottle—a total of eight great vinegars a year that I have discovered on my travels, eight vinegars that will bring you the joy Donn Chappellet brought me in 1983.

Your first two life-changing selections

And I can think of no greater way to kick off the David Rosengarten Real Vinegar Club than with a pair of mind-blowing vinegars from the country that practically invented wine and wine vinegar...Greece!

As readers of The Rosengarten Report know, I have taken two magical journeys to Greece this year—where, among many heart-stopping gastronomic delights, I have stumbled upon some of the very greatest vinegar I’ve ever tasted. The two vinegars I liked best, sure enough, are not available in the U.S. What maker of non-balsamic vinegar ever wants to go to the trouble of exporting non-balsamic vinegar to America?

But that’s until I came along. I have worked out all the frustrating details of export, import, etc.—and I am now able to offer you these two life-changing Greek vinegars as the welcome shipment of the David Rosengarten Real Vinegar Club.

Your first one—called Oxos—is a killer vinegar I happened upon in an upscale gourmet grocery in Athens. This shop dedicates itself to finding the very best of artisanal Greek production, and has a whole wall of Greek vinegars on offer.

I bought a bunch of them—and fell in deep, deep vinegar love with Oxos! It comes from the well-known wine area of Zitsa, which is near Epirus, in the northwest corner of Greece. The wine that goes into this vinegar is made from local grape varieties; the precious juice is then nurtured through a slow, slow acetification process (in the Orleans method, as developed in France), and then stored for a long time in oak and chestnut barrels.

The magnificent vinegar you will receive will be from wine that was made in Zitsa in the great 2000 vintage—and the pedigree will be apparent when you taste it! Just upon opening the bottle, you will sense the aroma bomb: raspberries, strawberries, dried fruits, and, most particularly, a spicy quality that suggests cinnamon more than anything else. The color is dark red, like a good mid-life wine—and the palate, while absolutely carrying through all of these wild, fruity-spicy aromas, is also crazy-tart, electric, with, aside from the taste of fruit, hardly any sweetness at all. Oxos, I predict, will become, in short order, your vinegar of choice for any salad you make!

Your second vinegar is completely different from the first. It is made by Gaia Wines (that’s YA-ya) on the fabled island of Santorini—by the man whom I consider to be the greatest winemaker in Greece!

For his vinegar, he has chosen to use Santorini wine from the Assyrtico grape—a grape that produces what most experts consider to be the best white wine of Greece, an earthy, long-lived wine that reflects the bizarre volcanic soil of Santorini, and the brain-drilling meltemi, or wind, that whistles through this Homeric-feeling place.

Brilliant winemaker that this guy is, he has come up with a new way to make vinegar: make it two ways, then combine them! The first way is a bit like the balsamic process; the juice of some of the Assyrtico grapes is gently heated in copper pots until only one-quarter of it is left. This batch has concentration, complexity, and some sweetness.

But the other half of the grapes is turned into a very un-sweet vinegar, using the classic Orleans process. Then...the winemaker marries them, and ages them for five years in 500-liter oak casks. The ultimate vinegar is poured directly from the casks into the bottles, with no filtration or any other treatment. The result is brown in color—but not nearly as dark as the color of balsamic vinegar. The nose suggests coffee, prunes, nuts, Sherry. The promise of all these things comes through on the astonishing palate—which is a touch sweeter than the Oxos palate, a little richer, but still very “dry” and exactly right for really sophisticated un-sweet salads. Of course, the extra layers of flavors in this one make it perfect for sauces and marinades; mix a bit of this Gaia with any brown sauce, and watch the fireworks go off with duck, foie gras, etc.

These two sublime vinegars are just the beginning!

I’m so excited to be involved in the world of vinegar—just as you will be!—because it is a huge, largely unexplored world out there, filled with gastronomic possibilities neither of us has ever even dreamed of!

I invite you to join me for this adventure, as we discover traditional vinegars from all around the globe that, with the greatest of ease, can add zing and liveliness to your home cooking.

I can’t know right now, of course, exactly where this road will lead us, but I’m anticipating at least some activity in the following vinegar sectors:

Vinegars from the Great Wine Regions. This is a natural, to be sure; almost all winemakers around the world convert some of their wine into vinegar. But I’m on the hunt for winemakers who have Donn Chappellet-type passion about vinegar—in regions with great vinegar traditions. I already know there’s fantastic Barolo vinegar, and, on the lighter side, great Champagne vinegar...even great Prosecco vinegar. Who knows what else I will find? Great Chablis vinegar? Great Tokay vinegar? Great South African Pinotage vinegar? The sky’s the limit!!!

Ultra-Deluxe Sherry Vinegar. Probably the most famous vinegar-making wine region in the world is the Sherry region, in Andalusia, in the south of Spain. I’ve been to this region several times, to learn more about its fabulous wines. But I’ve never made a vinegar-targeted journey...and I can’t wait to do so! For I understand that the brown, Sherry-based vinegars we get in the U.S. can be very, very good—but not as good as the exquisite long-aged Sherry vinegar not yet available in the U.S.! I love Sherry vinegar already. Soon, you and I are going to love it even more!

Malt Vinegar. Famous as the fish-and-chips vinegar in England, the malt vinegar that’s available in the U.S.—I think you’ll have to agree—is underwhelming. One reason may be that most English producers have changed their base ingredient for malt vinegar; though it used to be made from beer, most production today is from a sugar infusion of cereal starches. I’m on a malt-vinegar hunt: through Wales, Ireland, Scotland. And further still—for I have a tip that the best, truest, beeriest and maltiest malt vinegar in the world today is being produced...in Germany!

Japanese Vinegar. There’s a venerated Japanese vinegar-making tradition that has been practically overlooked in the American stampede to sticky-sweet balsamic vinegar. But I have tasted a number of vinegars made in Japan that are simply extraordinary—and exactly what you want to use in the preparation of great Japanese food. These can range from extremely bright, pure-tasting vinegars with something of an appley quality (perfect for making sushi rice), to brown-rice vinegars, darker in color, holding all the mystery and complexity of the famous Japanese “fifth taste,” umami.

Caribbean Vinegars. The “sour” taste in Caribbean cooking is very pronounced—and in a region with so much French influence, wouldn’t you expect a local vinegar tradition? It’s there, all right—it’s just that it gets overlooked continually in the U.S. Quel dommage! Last year I tasted a sugar-cane vinegar from Martinique that made me want to get on a boat soon (and I will!). “Sugar cane?” I thought. “That must be sticky-sweet, exactly what I don’t want”—but I was wrong! It was brilliantly tart, completely “dry”—and with a gorgeous, haunting, rum-like flavor, spilling over into the flavor of corn. Imagine what you can do with this vinegar when you’re making light Caribbean-style fish dishes!

Other Vinegars from Fruits and Vegetables. I gotta admit—I’m awfully traditional when it comes to the world’s great liquids. I don’t like flavored coffee. Or tea. I don’t like flavored beer, and flavored wine has no reason to live (with the exception of Retsina!). So I was pretty sure I felt the same way about vinegar: Why would I want the great soul of wine messed up by some cheap raspberry concentrate? But a few tastings in the last year have changed my mind. Well, not about the flavor additives; I still don’t like flavored vinegar. But I have now discovered many unusual vinegars around the world that are made not with flavor additives, but from different fruits and vegetables—ending up complex, intact, not sweet, filled with integrity and brimming with possibilities for salad and beyond. I was blown away by the Italian tomato vinegar I tasted recently (yes...made completely from tomatoes!), as well as the Indonesian coconut vinegar, and the Mexican pineapple vinegar so loved by Diana Kennedy. As the SS Rosengarten steams across the seven seas...there will be more!

Vinegars from Specific Grape Varieties. Lastly, I don’t want you to think I’ve abandoned the grape. Far from it. My favorite vinegars of all are wine vinegars—and I have discovered that, unlike the “Chardonnay Sauce” you find at your typically ersatz creative restaurant, vinegars can really be powerfully affected by individual grape varieties! I have tasted Cabernet vinegars with the soul of Cabernet, Syrah vinegars with real Syrah character, etc. There’s even a little-known artisanal producer right here in America, in Napa Valley, whose vinegars I can’t wait for you to taste! They are astonishing...made by two brothers who lavish on their hand-blended vinegars all the love and attention normally bestowed upon only the finest reserve wines. The search is on...all over the world. Who knows? Cabernet vinegar today...Pinot Gris vinegar tomorrow?

* * *

What an adventure in taste we will share! At times we will even work with the world’s greatest artisanal vinegar producers to make custom blends according to my instructions...and available to Club members only! What a dazzling, varied wardrobe of authentic vinegar flavors you will have to dress your salads and numerous other dishes! You will never be satisfied with ordinary vinegars again!

100% money-back guarantee if you’re not delighted!

Each quarterly shipment in the David Rosengarten Real Vinegar Club will bring you a set of two  250-ml bottles of authentic artisanal vinegar for only $39 (plus $10 shipping). Moreover, every quarterly shipment is protected by a 100% money-back satisfaction guarantee—no questions asked. So you have absolutely nothing to risk.

As an added bonus, I will also send you my tasting notes for each vinegar (so you can compare your impressions with mine)...plus suggestions for using each vinegar, emphasizing seasonal and regional uses and recipe ideas (including my favorite vinaigrettes).

This offer is strictly limited, but by volume. These rare, precious vinegars, so lovingly brought to the peak of perfection by the artisans who create them, are strictly limited in quantity. This is why we are extending this offer to only a relatively few food lovers.

Never a “minimum commitment”...
And you can cancel at any time

There is no minimum number of quarters that you must enroll for, and you can cancel your membership at any time. So you risk absolutely nothing—unless, of course, you let this chance slip by, in which case you’ll be missing the opportunity to secure your own private, continuous source of rare, sublime artisanal vinegars, all of which are vastly superior to the vinegars available in U.S. gourmet stores.

The offer I’m presenting here is available nowhere else—not in stores, catalogs, anywhere. Indeed, I don’t know of any other service in the world that delivers such vinegars to your door on a quarterly basis. This is truly a first, and you can be a Charter Member of the world’s first such Club!

Who can resist such great taste, and such great fun, in exploring the world’s greatest vinegars and savoring the astonishing impact on your salads and other favorite dishes?

Yours for Fabulous Foods,

David Rosengarten
Importer of the World’s Greatest Vinegars

P.S. Please provide your actual street address on the Order Form, and not a PO box, as UPS cannot deliver to a PO box address. UPS also needs your phone number, in case they have a question about delivery. Thank you!