Culatello is one of the most prestigious cold meats of the Italian tradition and is the finest part of the pig, the heart of the ham, between the fiocco and the gambetto, and is produced from October to February when the air is almost still, the fog dense and the temperature around 0°C. It is a cold meat product that has a characteristic pear shape, tied up in circles of string so as to form a large meshed net. The cold meat appears veined, with a sweet and delicate taste; the colour on cutting is a uniform red together with the white coloured fat. The raw material is the central part of the pig’s leg, boned and trimmed of fat, salted immediately after butchering for about five days, then washed in wine, covered with salt and some grains of pepper, encased in the pig’s bladder and bound.
Ageing takes place in a cool and ventilated cellar, built according to traditional criteria, for at least eleven months during which, on the basis of several factors such as humidity, heat and ventilation, the ideal conditions of ageing are kept unchanged.