SUPPLIER SPOTLIGHT: SEÑORÍO DE MONTANERA

Extremadura: the landlocked, little-visited region where Spain bumps up against the Portuguese border. A landscape of holm oaks and lush pastures – the famous dehesa, a sustainable forest ecosystem covering a huge area of south-west Spain – rolls away towards the horizon. Among the dark-trunked trees, herds of black pigs can be seen snuffling in the undergrowth, drinking at a stream, or dozing in the thin sunshine. These noble animals belong to the peerless Ibérico breed, the source of what is surely Spain’s supreme gastronomic delicacy: jamón Ibérico de bellota.

For there are hams, and there are hams. Of the many thousands of dry-cured jamones produced every year all over Spain, only a tiny minority can be said to be of superlative quality. And some of the finest of them all are made by Señorío de Montanera, the flagship brand among Brindisa’s four suppliers of top-quality acorn fattened Ibérico hams. Founded in 1995 by a group of Extremadura landowners keen to maintain the purity of the Ibérico breed, the company now presides over no less than 60,000 hectares of dehesa divided up between 75 farms in the local area.

Our guide is Rafael Navarro, head of production and a veritable authority on the process of ham-making from pork, as it were, to fork. Rafa leads the group briskly through the building, relating as he does so the life, and after-life, of a typical Ibérico pig around these parts. The pigs are first let loose in the dehesa towards the end of October and spend at least 60 days, usually more, gorging on their luxury diet of holm-oak acorns with a side-order of fresh grass. This annual pig-out is known as la montanera — hence the company name — and it’s an article of faith here that the animals should enjoy not one, but two acorn-eating seasons during their lives.

Following the Royal Decree of 2014 the Ibérico sector is highly regulated under Spanish law, with four different quality grades each designated by a coloured label (black, green, red, and white, the top-end ‘black label’ requiring 100% breed purity and an acorn-based diet). But Señorío de Montanera takes things even further in its quest for excellence. Sourcing the animals locally means they endure the shortest possible journey from farm to factory, thereby reducing stress and the possibility of injury en route. The company even has its own on-site slaughterhouse — a rare thing in the industry — ensuring that welfare and hygiene standards can be closely adhered to.

We move on to the butchery where great sides of pork hang high on hooks, ready for dismantling into hams, shoulders, and the rest. The meat is a deep red in colour, similar to that of beef or veal and quite different from the pinkish hue of an intensively-reared ‘white’ pig which may have taken no exercise in its short, sad life. It’s here that the various cuts of fresh meat — the presa and secreto, the ribs, loin, and sirloin – are identified and removed. Some of these cuts will make their way to the United Kingdom in frozen form to be distributed by Brindisa.

Meanwhile the hams embark on a long journey of their own. In this section they are trimmed and prepared, the hard skin cut into the characteristic V-shape. In this refrigerated room they are piled in layers (to a maximum of three hams deep) and thickly covered with Atlantic sea salt from Puerto de Santa Maria (Cádiz). According to Rafa, the ‘very delicate and important’ salting process extracts just enough humidity that no harmful microorganism can flourish in the meat. After that they are removed to the drying rooms to begin a long, slow cure which in the case of a large Ibérico ham can take as much as three years.

Now Rafa pulls open a heavy door onto the main bodega. This is the holy of holies, where hams and paletillas (shoulders) at various stages of curing are hung on ropes from floor to ceiling, speckled with white and grey bloom, their golden yellow fat glistening in the dim light that filters in through an upper window. Selecting a ham that will shortly be ready for sale, Rafa points out its elongated, slender shape and its finely formed, jet-black hoof — both signs that the animal in question has spent much of its life running freely in the open air.

Outside, the morning has brightened into a dazzling winter day. From the factory we drive the few miles to a large estate extending over some 600 hectares of prime dehesa. The herd of pure-breed pigs at Finca el Alcornocal (owned by the CEO of Señorío de Montanera, Francisco Espárrago) is among those providing the raw material for what might be described as the Rolls Royce of the company’s range — an acorn-fed Ibérico ham certified by the P.D.O. Dehesa de Extremadura.

At lunchtime we repair to the farmhouse where a fire is roaring in the grate and a feast awaits. All eyes, of course, are on the jamón de bellota Ibérico. We watch greedily as Sergio Venegas, sales director with the company, gets to work on a prime black-label ham with more than three years of age. Sergio lays out a platter of perfect slices, warming the plate briefly before the fire to bring up the complex flavours. To the eye, the wafer-thin slices are a dark ruby red criss-crossed with a delicate tracery of intra-muscular fat and flecked with white spots of tyrosine — the crystallised amino-acid that is the unmistakable, un-fakeable sign of a genuine acorn-fed jamón. In the mouth the ham’s reverberant flavour, with its fungal and smoky notes and its deep intermingling of salty and sweet, is astoundingly delicious.

I cast my mind back to the pigs we’ve seen outside in the dehesa and the factory a short drive away. In an age when food production can cover huge distances, it’s remarkable that what we are eating here is a local product that has remained so for the whole of its five-year lifespan. If this is the Rolls-Royce of hams, I reflect as I snaffle another slice, it has very few miles on the clock.