Salame di Varzi

Salame di Varzi is made exclusively from Italian heavy pigs, ground to a medium grain, stuffed into natural casing and tied by hand. It has held DOP status since 1996, a level of protection very few Italian salami reach, and production is confined to around fifteen villages in the Staffora valley, in the province of Pavia.

The defining detail sounds trivial and is not. No chopped garlic goes into the mix. Crushed cloves are steeped in red wine for hours, the liquid is strained, and only that infusion is worked into the meat. You get the perfume of garlic without its bite, and without the aftertaste that lingers into the next day.

The second distinguishing choice is the meat. The rules require prime cuts (leg, shoulder, fillet, loin) with belly, jowl and coppa supplying fat. This is not a salami built from trimmings, which is why the slice stays red, firm and sweet after months in a cellar.

Four formats exist, and they are really four ageing lengths: filzetta, filzettone, sottocrespone and cucito, from half a kilo to a little over two. The casing changes, the diameter changes and the time changes, from six weeks to six months. The mixture never does.

Sweet, meaty and clean, with a soft aromatic haze rather than a spice hit. If you have eaten Italian salami mostly in the fennel-and-chilli register, Varzi will read as restrained: pepper is the only assertive seasoning, and it arrives in occasional cracked bursts rather than as a constant background.

The wine infusion is the interesting part. It gives a faint vinous sweetness up front and a rounded, almost floral finish, and the garlic sits behind it like a memory. People who dislike garlicky salami usually like this one and cannot say why.

Texture depends on format. A young filzetta is soft, moist and mild, closer to a fresh salami. A six-month cucito is firmer, darker and more concentrated, with the fat gone slightly translucent and a nutty depth that the small formats never develop.

Slice it by knife, on the diagonal, three to four millimetres thick: enough body to hold the grain, thin enough for the fat to melt on the tongue. Take it out of the fridge half an hour before serving; cold fat is waxy and gives away nothing.

In Varzi it is eaten with the valley's plain wheat bread, with focaccia and, in the local combination outsiders never expect, with Apennine chestnut honey. The honey is bitter rather than sweet, and it pushes the meat's sweetness forward.

It cooks well, though using a six-month cucito for cooking is a waste. Dice a young filzetta into risotto or a chickpea soup; the ends and trimmings go into ravioli fillings and the vegetable tarts made all over the Oltrepò.

On a board, keep the neighbours quiet. Varzi is sweet and lightly spiced, and it vanishes next to hot sausage or smoked speck. Bread, pickled onions, a young goat cheese and a glass of fizzy Bonarda is the whole plate.

An uncut salami hangs in a cool, dark, airy place at 10 to 15°C with moderate humidity, where it carries on doing what it has done since it was made: losing water, firming up and shrinking while the flavour concentrates. Vacuum packed, it sits in the fridge until the producer date, usually months out. From the moment you cut it, the exposed face is the part that moves, drying and darkening within a day or two, so cover it with baking paper or press a saved piece of casing against it rather than sealing it under film.

Peel the casing back only as far as you are cutting, since bare surface dries quickest. Over weeks the fat turns from white to ivory and then yellowish as it oxidises, the aroma sharpens and the pepper note fades. If a piece has hardened further than you want, the local habit is to wrap it in a cloth moistened with white wine for a few hours, which softens the outer centimetre. Sliced packs curl within hours of opening; slices freeze a couple of months, coming back slightly grainy in the fat.

The slice is coarse, with large clean cubes of pure white fat set in deep ruby meat, and it should be soft enough that the fat looks on the point of melting. The seasoning list is famously short: salt, whole and cracked black pepper, and a red wine infusion made with garlic. No fennel, no chilli, no paprika, no herbs. The casing is natural gut, hand tied with string, dusted with the white surface bloom of curing and peeled back a few slices at a time. The DOP name covers four formats by size and ageing: Filzetta, Filzettone, Sottocrespone and the sewn Cucito, aged around six months.

On a deli counter abroad it sits next to salamis it is nothing like. Milano is finely ground with fat the size of rice grains, Napoli is smoked and hot, Felino is coarse but differently seasoned and tied, and Genoa salami in American shops is a category rather than a place. Anything reading Varzi style is not the DOP. In the Oltrepò Pavese it runs 20 to 30 euro a kilo, and $22 to $35 a pound through Italian importers abroad.

In Italy, buy in Varzi itself or from producers in the Staffora valley; delicatessens in Pavia and Milan carry it reliably. Look for the words Salame di Varzi DOP and the format name. Anything sold as 'Varzi-style' has no rules behind it at all.

Export volumes are small. In the US, specialist Italian importers list it at 24 to 36 dollars per pound when it appears; in the UK, expect 34 to 50 pounds per kilo at Italian delicatessens. Several valley producers ship within Italy and the EU, which is by far the cheapest route for European buyers.

If you are buying your first one, take a filzettone rather than a filzetta: it costs slightly less per kilo, has had a couple of months to settle, and still finishes before it dries out in a home kitchen.

Varzi itself: a medieval hill town of two thousand people with towers, low arcades, cobbled lanes and the Malaspina castle. The salami shops and trattorie are all within the old walls, and differences between producers are audible enough that it is worth tasting in two or three before buying.

The DOP villages along the valley: Bagnaria, Ponte Nizza, Godiasco, Rivanazzano Terme, and higher up Fortunago, Zavattarello and Romagnese, all within half an hour of switchback road. Osterie there serve the salami as a first course and agnolotti straight after.

The wider Oltrepò Pavese makes an easy two-day trip from Milan or Pavia: Bonarda and Pinot Nero cellars around Santa Maria della Versa and Casteggio, the castle at Zavattarello, and Monte Penice on the Apennine ridge. On clear days from the crest above Varzi you can see the sea at Genoa.