The Salty Mountain

Slow-ish travel by train across Europe.

I’m writing to you today from a brand spanking new ÖBB train slicing between the Austrian and German Alps, midway through a mountainous vacation I’ve taken myself on following the conclusion of October’s “A Well Kept Pig” workshop. It’s been a huge breath of fresh air to experience and taste the breadth of France and Austria outside of my little town of Nérac, as well as a bit of a trust fall for my new home; leaving behind all the charcuterie that we made during our course. Right before my departure, I transferred all of our products, Noix de Jambon, Coppa, Lomo, Saucisson, and Saucisse séche, from

Kate Hill

’s Relais de Camont’s 300-year-old kitchen (and sechoir) to my house’s kitchen.

While the oldest part of my house dates back to the 1600’s, the new, ‘modern’ kitchen is distinctly from the 1960’s… and extremely poorly insulated and drafty - it’s just dirt under those floorboards. Luckily for us, this provides an ideal environment for aging our style of charcuterie in the region, and I’ve tucked all the pieces into my rafters. The smell of black pepper and happy mold has already permeated my entire ground floor, and I’d been making small fires in my fireplace to moderate the humidity of the space during an out-of-character warm and wet spell prior to my departure.

The train has just passed Wörgl, so that’s about halfway now on my journey to München, let’s keep going. After hanging up all these beauties (labelled, dated, and weighed, thank you very much), I hopped on my early morning train from Agen to Paris, then on to Salzburg. Salzburg, of course translating directly to the “Salt Mountain” - as anyone who’s read Mark Kurlansky’s ‘Salt, A World History’, can snappily tell you. Austrian charcuterie is fascinating and so, so different than what’s going on in France and I’ll tell you all about it in the coming weeks. For now, though, it’s been a near-constant stream of cask beer and jovial Austrians and Germans with tons of smoked wurst, spicy mustard and freshly grated horseradish. Keep your eyes peeled for more on that.

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Also, I have a new nitpick that I’d like to raise - I’ve noticed that it’s becoming more and more common in food copy (especially marketing, public-facing copy) to conflate curing and drying and aging, or even to simply treat them as one and the same. These are distinct and discreet processes from one another. Almost universally, a product must be first cured, then, it may be dried. Once the drying process has started, the work of ‘aging’ begins, i.e. fine tuning the product’s drying process. When I see posts on Instagram about Jimmy Whatsit’s new 'three-month long cured lonza’, my eyebrows start on their exit trajectory from my face. Because, let’s be real, if something has been curing for three months, it’s basically just a salt lick.

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But I’m not here only to whine, I’m here to drink wines and share my charcuterie discoveries with you. Before leaving France, I was able to cheekily crack into some of our workshop’s products that had come to maturity before the others. As usual, I decided to play on Hard Mode — I had the bright idea to serve our charcuterie to an all-French TV crew who was on site at Camont that day and needed a contractually-obligated lunch made for them by somebody. That somebody was me — I was the guy. So, I threw my white Crocs into 4WD and pulled down some of the smaller Noix de Jambon and a Saucisse séche from the rail and got to slicing. Suffice to say, I was extremely happy with the result. The French were too - they scarfed all of it.

Noix de Jambon, 35% weight loss in 12 days.

Pulling into München Haupbahnhof in about ten minutes now — I also wanted to give an update to my course schedule for 2025. I’ve decided to only run the “A Well Kept Pig” workshop once during the coming Winter months. I might run it once more in October 2025, but there is no guarantee of that happening. If you want to come to France to learn these traditions and foodways with me and my team, this is your shot. Of course, if you have any questions, please shoot me an email. Here’s a picture of what’s cooking for Winter and Spring 2025:

• A Well Kept Pig (January 21 to February 2) LINK

• Gascon Duck Charcuterie and Cookery (February 18 to February 24) LINK

• Basque Ham Trip with the Fête du Jambon (April, exact dates TBD)

Ok, people are scrambling for their bags - I can feel their thirst for that sweet, sweet German nectar of life and for Bretzeln as big as your head. Gotta go!