“It’s almost inhuman”
Checking 800 hams a day with your nose: Christmas is high season for Spain’s ham sniffers
The ham is particularly important in Spain at Christmas
© Photo Studio Megg // Picture Alliance
The perfect ham is not just a question of taste – it is also a question of smell. A manufacturer in Spain therefore relies entirely on the nose of its professional ham sniffers. And thereby pushes them to their limits during the Christmas season.
Whether Serrano, the fine Jamón Ibérico or even Cebo – a feast in Spain is hardly conceivable without the local ham. And it becomes even more important at Christmas time. Then it not only belongs on every table, but is also gladly given away. For a very special profession, the pre-Christmas season will be the toughest of the year: The ham snoopers reach their limits in the Advent season.
Manuel Vega Domínguez reports in a detailed article in the “Wall Street Journal. Vega is the” Calador “, the professional ham sniffer at the Cinco Jotas gourmet slaughterhouse. In 1989, the 53-year-old started working there as a floor scrubber, working his way up to the packing company above and has been the top quality sniffer since 2004.
Sniffing ham in a chord
Vega can only use his nose to check whether the matured hams meet the company’s high standards. To do this, he pricks the ripened ham at four fixed points, on the heel, the hipbone and in two places around the hip joint. The quality is only right if the scent corresponds to the exact profile of wood, umami and a slight sweetness.
During the Christmas season, this test is a real challenge: Vega manages 800 mails a day. That’s 3200 snoopers on a single working day, 6.6 per minute. Vega, exhausted for weeks, told the newspaper that he was “at the limit of what is humanly feasible.” How much, that shows his answer to the question of whether he could improve if it were necessary. “I would still find a way to make 801,” he explains dryly. “Maybe 802 is possible.” But then it’s over.
High season for ham
The bare figures show how important the Christmas business is: Cinco Jotas generates half of its annual turnover in the time before the holidays alone. For the high season, the company is therefore bringing five more sniffer helpers into the company, who support Vega full-time. He gets along well on his own in everyday life. In February, he estimates about 200 hams a day.
The hard snooping demands a lot from him. He eats six oranges a day so as not to contract the coronavirus and run the risk of losing his sense of smell. In the evening he is gentle on the nose with a tea made from a special, home-picked mint. His wife is not allowed to change the perfume in order not to throw him out of step. He recently struggled with the fact that his new shampoo had irritated his sense of smell. “The smell of the perfect ham is burned into my brain,” he explains. It’s not just about recognizing bad or rotten ham. Even a coffee note or the wrong sweetness would lead to discarding.
Super noses
Vegas supervisor, Quality Manager Cristina Sánchez Blanco, decides who is suitable for snooping. In a special test, the candidates are examined and have to smell individual drops of gin, alcohol or ammonia from water cups. According to her, only she, Vega and the Vice Quality Manager have ever done perfectly.
Sánchez, who is the fourth generation to work for the slaughterhouse, also adheres to strict rules to protect the sense of smell. Perfume or make-up are taboo in the company. When her sense of smell was even sharper during pregnancy, she became stricter than ever, she told the Journal. As soon as her husband came in, she could sniff out what he had experienced on his working day as a police officer. Sometimes the super smell is more of a curse than a blessing. When her husband last gave her perfume, she already knew which it was from the wrapping paper.
Source:Wall Street Journal