This Little Piggy Went to Market
A homegrown salumi company is taking the Roaring Fork Valley by storm
The first thing I notice while visiting Il Porcellino Salumi’s new wholesale production facility in Basalt is, it smells incredible.
The heady aroma comes from 10,000-plus pounds of dry-curing meat and 400 pounds of pasture-raised, heritage-breed Berkshire pork that’s in the process of being stuffed into beef casings, forming 600 chubby links of orange-pistachio salami.
“It’s the fun part of what we do here,” says operations manager Phil House, as production assistants Beau Burns and José Martinez pour a mixture of ground pork flavored with garlic, orange zest, Sicilian pistachios, salt, sugar, celery powder and red wine into a vacuum stuffing machine.
The 11-ounce links are tied off with twine, cut into three-piece chains and hung in a series of chambers and drying rooms for a meticulous fermenting and curing process. Six weeks later, they’re packaged by hand in craft paper, labeled and shipped or distributed throughout Colorado and 15 other states.
In addition to Meat & Cheese, Il Porcellino products are on the menu at Acquolina, The Little Nell, The Ritz-Carlton Club at Aspen Highlands and The Way Home, Marble Distilling Co. and Allegria, in Carbondale. Roxy’s Market, Clark’s Market and The Butcher’s Block carry the salumeria’s retail products.
The Basalt facility, which opened in March 2018, is due to the ongoing efforts of entrepreneurial chef, salumiere and Il Porcellino owner Bill Miner. A longtime proponent of local sourcing, Miner decided in 2015 that the time was right to branch out from helming kitchens at spots such as Boulder’s Modena and Relish Catering & Events in Denver.
“I got to the point as a chef where I wanted to make sausage and bacon,” he says. “I found a passion for cured meats and how to make them.”
Noting customers’ enthusiasm for his dry-cured coppa, bresaola, mortadella and Berkeley ham (an applewood-smoked boneless leg), in late 2015 Miner opened Il Porcellino—Denver’s first retail salumeria.
Of Il Porcellino’s immediate success and continued evolution into a hybrid of delicatessen, butcher shop and salumeria, Miner says, “People can buy what we make and take it home, and with regard to salumi, that’s still pretty unique for Colorado. We feel like we found the right niche and the neighborhood [the vibrant Berkeley district] is very artistic and artisanal, as far as small, locally owned businesses are concerned.”
Opening a second production space in Basalt was another case of good timing, with a bit of serendipity thrown in. In the summer of 2017, Wendy Mitchell of Aspen’s Meat & Cheese Restaurant and Farm Shop, called Miner with a proposition. “She said she was going to stop making salumi and cheese and wanted someone to take over the meat side of her USDA-approved Basalt facility,” he says. “We’d never met or talked, but she knew about Il Porcellino.”
“Bill was following the same principles and philosophies as we were,” says Mitchell. “The idea of Meat & Cheese being able to source local products made with the highest integrity and attention to quality was appealing.” Mitchell now serves and sells “anything we can get,” from Il Porcellino and is especially fond of the pepperoni.
To close the 180-mile gap between Denver and Basalt, Miner enlisted Meat & Cheese’s former salumiere and cheesemaker, Patrick Kennedy, to get the project up and running. Currently only products made in Basalt—a rotating selection of smalland large-format salami such as chorizo, cacciatore (salami with garlic, caraway seed and chile flakes), black truffle salami and juniper and pepper salami—receive local distribution. Kennedy has since relocated to Denver to run the company’s butchering operation, and House stepped into the role of operations manager last June.
When Miner isn’t working in Denver, overseeing sales or helping out with production in Basalt, he’s finding new farms to supply pasture-raised Berkshire pork and other ingredients. Il Porcellino currently procures pork shoulder butts, legs and fatback from Mcdonald Family Farm in Brush, Colorado, and Red Top Farms, a Midwestern pork co-op. Other ingredients, including spices and nuts, are imported from Italy. (Local beer and whiskey sources are in the works.)
Even with so much on his plate, Miner is enthusiastic to expand Il Porcellino’s ethos and distribution.
“It’s exciting to feel like we’re growing a national brand,” he says. “We’re small right now and never want to be a gigantic company. But hopefully, we’ll be a household name before you know it.”
GO FIND IT!
Il Porcellino Salumi
IlPorcellinoDenver.com
Buy retail products at Roxy’s Market, Meat & Cheese, The Butcher’s Block and Clark’s Market in Aspen.
