"Real" balsamic vinegar as the title uses the world real is related to protected designation of origin, abbreviated PDO in English or DOP in Italian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_designation_of_origi...
This designation in the context of balsamic vinegar involves specific grapes from specific regions, but the most important characteristic in the usage of the word real in this context is that there is only a single ingredient:
> True [traditional] balsamic vinegar is made from a reduction of pressed Trebbiano and Lambrusco grapes. The resulting thick syrup, called mosto cotto in Italian [grape must], is subsequently aged for a minimum of 12 years in a battery of several barrels of successively smaller sizes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balsamic_vinegar
The confusion arises where you have products that are not traditional DOP balsamic vinegar.
Other methods of producing products labeled as balsamic vinegar could actually use the above single ingredient musto cotto but with grapes from outside the two designated regions, which is then also aged in wooden barrels for at least 12 years, the same single ingredient recipe aged in batteries of wooden barrels production method used to make so-called traditional balsamic vinegar.
Or, grape must may be mixed with wine vinegar and only be aged for as little as few months in non-wooden barrels - this is the type of product that seems to me to be less "real" as TFA uses the word.
I would personally rather consume either traditional DOP "real" balsamic vinegar, or at least a cheaper alternative which uses the same "single ingredient grape must aged in wooden barrels at least 12 years" recipe as traditional balsamic vinegar, as that is at least the same production process.
Any other vinegar product that uses blends of grape must and wine vinegar may be a fine-tasting product according to some, but to me, it isn't even the same thing, and it isn't really in the spirit of balsamic vinegar. To sell such a blend and labeling it as balsamic vinegar feels like selling blended whisky as single malt whisky - it minces words in order to subvert truth in advertising to the detriment of informed consumers attempting to buy a product that actually is what its label purports it to be.
To me, these are distinctions with a difference.
> A distinction without a difference is a type of logical fallacy where an author or speaker attempts to describe a distinction between two things where no discernible difference exists. It is particularly used when a word or phrase has connotations associated with it that one party to an argument prefers to avoid.
> For example, a person might say "I did not lie; I merely stretched the truth a little bit."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinction_without_a_differen...