Cooked wine dressings

How it is made

You take the must — from freshly pressed grapes or ripe figs — and let it simmer over a low flame for hours, until it shrinks and thickens. No sugar is added: the sweetness is the fruit's own, concentrated. It is one of the oldest ways of preserving fruit, born when sugar was not available.

How to use it

On cheese: a thread over an aged caciocavallo or a fresh ricotta is the pairing that explains everything. On fruit and desserts: over a slice of melon, over ice cream, over almond pastries. In Salento's traditional sweets it goes into the dough — vincotto taralli and Christmas cartellate are full of it. In cooking: a few drops in a meat sauce or over roast vegetables do the same work as a balsamic reduction, with a different flavour.

Grape or fig

Grape vincotto is drier, with a faintly acidic edge that suits savoury dishes. The fig one is sweeter and thicker, and works better with fresh cheese and with fruit.

It is not vinegar

People sometimes mistake it for balsamic: the resemblance is only in the colour. Vincotto does not ferment and does not sting — it is sweet, and anyone tasting it for the first time notices at once.