Italian pork legs and sea salt, nothing else: no preservatives, no additives. Ageing lasts at least twelve months, in a particular microclimate — the hills south of the Via Emilia, between the Enza and Stirone rivers — where winds from the sea mix with air from the Apennines. The ducal mark, branded onto the rind, completes the process.
The earliest records of ham-curing in the Parma area date to the second century BC, mentioned in Marcus Porcius Cato's «De agricultura». Between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the beccai, the city's ancient butchers, organised themselves into a guild; in 1459 the lardaioli, who handled slaughter and salting of the pig, split off to form their own craft body.
The Consorzio del Prosciutto di Parma was founded in 1963, and has protected and promoted the product worldwide ever since. Protected Designation of Origin status arrived in 1996, with a production zone limited to the province of Parma alone.
