Belmonte gammune

History and origin

Belmonte Calabro, in the province of Cosenza, sits on the back of a rocky hill at about 200 metres, shaped like a ship with its bow pointing to the sea. Its hills have produced gammune since the nineteenth century, a cured leg similar to culatello.

The name has two possible origins: it may come from the Spanish «jamón», adapted to the dialect, but in Calabrian the leg is called «gamma», very close to «gammune».

Calabrian pork-curing traditions are known well beyond the region. Once almost every farming family kept one or two pigs, which provided meat for the whole year. In the nineteenth century they were mostly black pigs, later almost lost with the arrival of larger breeds such as Large White, Landrace and Yorkshire. To save gammune, which needs skilled hands and a long wait, Slow Food set up a Presidium in Belmonte.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Gammune di Belmonte

Area and method of production

The leg is boned with great care so as not to damage meat and sinews, leaving two fingers of fat around it. The meat is salted and flavoured with pepper sauce, once made at home by the women of the house.

It is then stuffed into the pig's bladder or into pleura membranes separated from the fat; alternatively, pieces of pleura and bladder are sewn together to form a pouch. Gammune dries and ages in the cellars of Belmonte's houses for at least sixteen months, and the breeze rising from the sea perfects the ageing.

The Presidium also promotes the black pig, a hardy breed of medium-small size, with a long, thin snout, large drooping ears and long bristles on the back. The pigs live free-range in beech, chestnut and oak woods, with a shelter at night, eat acorns, tubers and chestnuts with extra local cereals and vegetables, and are slaughtered at sixteen months, when they weigh at least 150 kilos.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Gammune di Belmonte

How to recognise it

Gammune is a cured meat made from a boned pork leg, similar in type to culatello. It weighs from two to three and a half kilos, and its shape depends on the natural casing it is stuffed into, the bladder or a sewn pouch of pleura and bladder.

The pepper sauce used to flavour the meat and the long ageing, at least sixteen months, give it its character. What makes it unique, according to the Presidium producers, is also Belmonte's air: the village cellars receive the sea breeze, which accompanies the slow drying.

It is a complex product, requiring experience in both making and ageing and a long wait before it reaches the table. That is why gammuni are few and closely tied to the village where they are born.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Gammune di Belmonte

Where to taste it

Gammune is found in Belmonte Calabro, on the Tyrrhenian coast of the province of Cosenza, where the village stretches along its rocky hill like a ship heading for the sea. The cellars of Belmonte's houses are where the ageing itself takes place.

Visiting Belmonte means seeing the landscape that gives the cured meat its character: the hills where it is made, the beech, chestnut and oak woods where the black pigs roam, and the sea that sends its breeze into the cellars.

The Slow Food Presidium works to keep this tradition alive and make it known: a stop in the village, on a route along the Calabrian Tyrrhenian coast, is a chance to taste a rare cured meat tied to a single place.

Sources: Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Gammune di Belmonte

Protection

• Slow Food Presidium — gammune-di-belmonte (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Gammune di Belmonte)

When

• Production: January–February, December (Fondazione Slow Food — Presidio Gammune di Belmonte)
• Winter

Where

Calabria

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