Mont Charvin is producing saucissons and cured meats
in the Haute-Savoie, with the emphasis firmly placed on quality rather than
quantity. Tim tasted their produce at a market in France, and was so impressed
he had to find out more about them. He did, and you can now buy Mont Charvin
charcuterie in our own Ginger Pig shops – and nowhere else in the U.K.
You can read the
story of Mont Charvin below, but first a little saucisson of what we’ve got in our
Hackney, Shepherd’s Bush and Moxon Street shops:
Saucisson
artisanal traditionnel (with just salt, pepper and garlic)
Saucisson
aux noisettes entières (with whole hazelnuts)
Saucisson
aux cèpes (with ceps/porcini mushrooms)
Saucisson
fines herbes (with herbs de Provence, basil and tarragon)
Saucisson
campagnard (a large slicing cured sausage)
Coeur
de jambon (outstanding cured ham)
Coppa (cured neck of
pork)
They’re exceptionally
well-made – high quality meat, the right amount of fat, all natural casings, and the precision
spicing that comes from years of experience. They are richly savoury, and the
texture is spot on; emulsified without blending into one indistinct texture,
meat, fat and spice working together without getting lost. Really outstanding
stuff.
The story
Establishing the business some 20 years ago wasn’t
easy. They began producing cured meats using premium ingredients – with the
price tag that accompanies – while consumers were starting to look to supermarkets
for cheaper food. Mont Charvin stuck with it, and now distribute to retailers
across the region, as well as exporting further afield (including coppa to
Italy!). Owner Christian refused to sell to the Ginger Pig unless we went to visit him in the Savoie, to learn about his product and how it is made. Oh, if we must…
Christian spent 17 years as production manager
before taking control of the business, which currently employs 16 members of
staff. He has seen consumers flock to supermarkets in droves before gradually
returning to the small independents again, in part driven by tourists’
enthusiasm for eating authentic local produce.
A number of local cheese-makers and charcuteriers have formed a
cooperative to sell their produce in the area, which remains an independent enterprise despite attempts at buy-in from bigger chains. There used to be many
more small producers in the area but most have either been swallowed by big
business, or have tried to emulate the growth strategy of larger companies –
with the subsequent drop in quality – and gone bust.
We arrive to meet Christian at his Annecy production
unit, but our meeting is interrupted just a few minutes in when the whole
business stops for a break at 9am – five hours after work begins each day. This
tradition is strictly adhered to, and sees all 16 employees get together for
coffee, local bread, a selection of their charcuterie and a ham made from
rolled belly. The work is very labour
intensive and relatively unindustrialised, with only a few mechanised
concessions to give greater control over the process, with no loss of tradition
and quality; this morning break is crucial to keep everyone going.
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Christian with the vacuum machine, which helps to produce a tight texture
The pork is from pigs reared outdoors, by small
producers in the local area. Christian dreams of one day farming their own
animals for production – to be fed on cereal and whey, the latter a by-product
from local cheese producers – but for the time being will continue to buy from
trusted local sources.
They take between one and two tonnes of pork each
day, which is prepared by the local abattoir butchery to strict specifications.
Bellies are taken of the bone but left in the piece, and shoulders are
carefully boned, trimmed of any gristle and sinew and divided into separate muscles.
For their cured pork loin – “bacon”, as
it is referred to in the region – they take only the boned out loins from
female pigs for flavour and succulence. Sheets of meticulously trimmed back fat
are brought to a very low temperature, so that they break into neat little
chunks when cut rather than melting away into the mix.
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This fat is one of the key elements to the saucisson,
and getting the right balance of fat to meat and the right ‘cut’ is crucial.
Many producers add lactose for succulence and moisture, however Mont Charvin
prefers to take heavier pigs – 110-130kg – with a greater percentage of fat to
do this naturally. The meat for their saucisson must be cut with absolute
precision – and never minced – to ensure that the end result has the right
texture.
Christian mixes his own spices, as he doesn’t trust
the companies making pre-mixed blends not to change their recipes. There’s a
huge grinder for pepper, which has a number of different-sized grinds for the
various recipes. Christian tells us that he can make 10 different sausages
using the same ingredients, and it’s not until we taste a few that we really
see what he means. We try three saucisson made only with pork, fat, garlic,
salt and pepper and natural casings, but due to the different-sized chunks of meat, different
ratios and varying grinds of pepper, we have three completely different
products. It’s not just that one is more peppery than the other, or has larger
chunks of fat, they really are very distinctive, and we wouldn’t have guessed
they were from the same base ingredients.
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| Pepper grinder |
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| Spice blends ready to go into the mix |
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| A different coloured string for each saucisson |
The freshly made sausages gradually make their way
through a labyrinth of drying rooms, all at differing precise temperatures.
From the production floor they go into a fridge to set for a day, before going
straight into a room at 25C. The smell is, well, like you’d expect pork and
garlic to smell as they’re starting to ferment, but it’s this first blast of
warmth that helps to ensure the texture of the finish sausages. They go from
here through a series of increasingly colder rooms, which – although monitored
by a snazzy control room – Christian checks several times a day to make sure
everything is right. Saucissons are dried for around three months and hams for
six; Mont Charvin will say “until they are ready”.
