Ciauscolo IGP

Marche (especially Macerata and Ascoli Piceno provinces)

The Marche's uniquely spreadable salame — made from a rich combination of pork shoulder, belly, and fatback (60-70% fat by weight) blended with garlic, black pepper, fennel seeds, and red wine (Vernaccia di Serrapetrona), cased in natural pig gut, cold-smoked lightly over fragrant woods, and hung to mature 15-60 days. The result is a soft, spreadable salame that glides onto bread like a pâté, rosy-pink, aromatic, and uniquely immediate in the way it melts. The only Italian salame classified as 'spreadable' that has IGP protection.

• Both are uniquely spreadable cured pork products with protected status — Sobrasada uses sweet pimentón for colour and flavour, Ciauscolo uses Vernaccia wine, both achieving spreadability through extreme fat content rather than emulsifiers → Sobrasada de Mallorca Spanish · (Mallorca)
• Both are spreadable pork-and-fat preparations served as a condiment on bread — Rillettes are cooked and shredded (a potted meat), Ciauscolo is raw-cured and smoked (a salame), both achieving the same textural result through entirely different routes → Rillettes du Mans French

Unctuous, intensely porky, aromatic with garlic and fennel, with a whisper of woodsmoke — the most luxurious and immediate of all Italian salumi