Speck Alto Adige IGP — Cold-Smoked Cured Ham of the Dolomites

Alto Adige (South Tyrol) — Speck production is documented from the 13th century in South Tyrolean records. The IGP designation covers the entire Province of Bolzano. The alternating smoke-and-air technique is believed to have developed as a compromise between the northern European smoking tradition and the Italian air-drying tradition that met in the Dolomites.

Speck Alto Adige IGP is the defining cured meat of the Alto Adige (South Tyrol) — a pork leg cured with an alternating rub of salt, pepper, rosemary, bay, juniper berries, and other herbs and spices (the precise mixture is a house secret for each producer), then cold-smoked intermittently over beech and juniper wood chips, and air-dried for a minimum of 22 weeks in the fresh mountain air of the Dolomites. It differs from all other Italian prosciutti in the smoking step — no other Italian cured ham is smoked. The result is a ham of extraordinary complexity: the smoke, the juniper spice, the mountain air-aging producing a flavour that is simultaneously clean and complex, sweet and slightly resinous.

Speck Alto Adige sliced thin has a visual and aromatic identity unlike any other Italian cured meat — the dark reddish-brown rind, the deep rose meat, the white fat layer with the occasional juniper seed. The flavour opens with clean sweetness, then the smoke arrives (gentle, resinous, not dominant), then the juniper spice, then a long, slightly salty finish. With rye bread and horseradish cream, it is the Alps on a plate.