Prosciutto Di Parma Riserva
Our Parma Ham is made by Piero Montali together with his two sons Stefano and Raphaele. Each of them plays a vital role in the production of this sweet, tender ham and, as demand for it far outstrips supply, the family are as selective about who they sell it to as they are about the fresh hams they choose. We are lucky first to have found it (after 3 years of looking!) and also to be able to import a small quantity that we sell online.
Piero Montali spends 3 mornings a week selecting the fresh hams they use for their production. He does this from April to December every year: very unusually the family stop production between January and mid April. During these months, when the pigs can sense the arrival of spring, their meat is more prone to problems during ageing.
Raphaele is then in charge of production at the prosciuttifio and every step in the process from salting to trimming, larding to calculating curing times is done intuitively, relying on his craft rather than the more formulaic approach of other prosciuttifici
The last and longest period of curing (some 20 months for our hams) takes place in big brick drying rooms where wooden hanging rails, the current of sweet mountain air and temperatures of up to 18˚C encourage enzymes and thus flavour development (conditions that are a world apart from the steel drying racks and concrete cold rooms with no windows where the massive majority of Parma Hams are now produced). It is this final process that will turn a carefully salted leg of pork into an amazing Prosciutto di Parma.
Stefano Montali is quick to stress that it is not their production that has improved but everybody else’s that has got worse over the last 40 years. They have stuck to traditions that are overlooked in a period of mass food production and the result is a ham that tastes like they used to taste 40 years ago: sweet but insaporito or full of flavour, tender and lean.
each ham is given its own mark