Fine Cheese & Charcuterie June 2017

“The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.” Having spent a fair amount of time in regions throughout Spain, I have not found Henry Higgins assertion to be necessarily true, but then maybe I just wasn’t there at the right time of year. Raining or not, I love Spain and I cherish the memories of the many trips I’ve made there to study cheese, ham and wine, and to attend Alimentaria. In the 1990s I was fortunate enough to make a series of press junkets at the invitation of Foods From Spain, the agency responsible for promoting the bounty of their country to the US. The three trips were all about cheese, each one focusing on a specific type of milk – sheep first (oveja), followed by cow (vaca) and goat (cabra) – and as fate would have it, I was the only journalist to make it on all three trips. It was a seminal experience for me, especially as so many of these great cheeses were unknown here at the time. It was the beginning of my career as a food journalist (I somehow talked my way onto the first trip and have been writing about Spain and Spanish food ever since) and, having first visited in 1979, a continuation of my love a air with the country, the food and the people. 

Even though those trips were designed around queso, I found myself also eating a great deal of the country’s other iconic food, jamón. There was no escaping it, and why would one ever want to? I remember one night, very late, as we were driving back from a sheep farm/cheesemaker somewhere in La Mancha, when we paused at a truck stop. My good friend David Rosengarten and I went inside to see what the place had to offer and were surprised and delighted to see the distinctive black hoof, or pata negra, sticking up from behind the counter. We immediately ordered a plate of jamón iberico as if we were in a fine dining restaurant and not a food mart attached to a filling station. I thought about all of this when I was penning the sidebars for this issue on Queso Manchego and jamón iberico de bellota (see also “Tapas in a Tin” in Fine Foods Quarterly). Spain will always be a very special place for me, and Spanish cheese, ham, wine and other comestibles will always have a place on my table. I hope some of the stories this month will inspire you to make your own sojourn there and to seek out and try the fabulous foods from Spain at this summer’s Fancy Food Show. 

Buen viaje y buen apetito. 

James Mellgren 

Managing Editor, Fine Cheese & Charcuterie 

jmellgren@gourmetbusiness.com