The Ancient Craft and Tradition of Artisan Charcuterie is Being Reborn
CrushBrew Editorial · Food & Hudson Valley · 7 min read
A craving for artisan charcuterie is resurging in restaurants across the country, and few places have embraced it like New York’s Hudson Valley. The region’s pasture-raised pork, whole-animal ethos, and a now-famous master class have turned curing meat into a craft worth traveling for. At the center sits Raven & Boar, a whey-fed pig farm whose pork has fed some of the most acclaimed kitchens in the Northeast, and which now cures its own.
In This Article
What is artisan charcuterie, and why is it resurging?
Charcuterie, the old European craft of curing, smoking, and otherwise preserving meat, is having an American moment. Producers everywhere are reaching back for the skills and traditions of Germany, France, Italy, and Spain even as they innovate their own approach. Master charcutier and salumiere Francois Vecchio, in his book co-authored with Elizabeth Pepin Silva, framed the moment as a chance to reconnect with the ancient craft and tradition of charcuterie, salumi, and wurst, and to re-evaluate the industry’s values toward quality over quantity.
Charcuterie
Charcuterie is the craft of preparing and preserving meat, primarily pork, through curing, smoking, salting, and cooking. It covers cured cuts, sausages, terrines, pâtés, and confit. The closely related Italian tradition of salumi refers to cured-meat specialties like prosciutto and salami.
Vecchio’s larger argument is that traditional methods do not just make better-tasting sausage, they are also more environmentally sound, rewarding sustainability, humane husbandry, and a respect for ecology. That ethos has dovetailed with the broader farm-to-table movement, and nowhere more naturally than in the Hudson Valley.
How did the Hudson Valley become a charcuterie hub?
The valley is a hotbed of top-quality, natural food products, a pasture region well suited to humane, sustainable livestock farming. Sensing the potential, Sara Grady, then vice president of programs at Glynwood, the nonprofit agricultural organization in Cold Spring that works to keep farming viable in the region, organized an invite-only master class with Vecchio. It gathered the area’s leading sausage and charcuterie producers to spark collaboration and support high-value products suited to the land.
Out of that world came some of the craft’s most recognizable names. Scott Bridi started the charcuterie program at Manhattan’s Gramercy Tavern before founding Brooklyn Cured in 2010, now a nationally distributed, award-winning charcuterie brand. Paul Wetzel took over that Gramercy Tavern program and ran it for more than a decade, teaching butchery on the side and assisting Vecchio at the Glynwood class, before eventually trading the city for the farm itself, more on that below.
Jeff Gimmel offers a chef’s view from upstate. With his wife, pastry chef Nina Bachinsky Gimmel, he opened Swoon Kitchenbar in Hudson in 2004, widely credited as the Hudson Valley’s first farm-to-plate restaurant, and still going strong two decades on. Gimmel sees the charcuterie revival as part of a turn toward rustic, low-waste cooking made in the tradition of our grandparents, a primal pull, he says, that even shapes how new restaurants are built.
What makes Raven & Boar’s whey-fed pigs special?
If one farm anchors this story, it is Raven & Boar in East Chatham, the woman-owned farm Ruby Duke established with her husband Sather after leaving Brooklyn for roughly 100 acres of Northern Columbia County in 2008. Their heritage-breed pigs, Large Black, Gloucester Old Spot, Red Wattle, Berkshire, Tamworth, and more, are silvo-pastured, roaming open pasture and forest to forage roots and acorns alongside a diet of grass, vegetables, fruit, and whey-soaked grains.
Whey-fed pork
Whey-fed pork comes from pigs raised partly on whey, the liquid byproduct of cheesemaking. The practice is rooted in Northern Italy, where pigs fed Parmesan whey become the region’s famed prosciutto di Parma. Whey-fed pork is prized for being naturally more marbled, with a distinctive flavor and texture well suited to charcuterie.
That whey tradition is the heart of the operation. Studying animal husbandry, Ruby learned how Northern Italian farmers feed their pigs cheese whey, and built the same idea into Raven & Boar, sourcing whey from local cheesemakers including Twin Maple Farm in Ghent. The result is exactly what Italian salumi makers prize: well-marbled pork with a clean, rich flavor. Jeff Gimmel, who buys from the farm, puts it plainly.
“The cuts are luscious with a real clean pig flavor.”
— Jeff Gimmel, Swoon Kitchenbar
Quality of life carries through to the end: the farm processes its animals at a nearby USDA-certified facility, Hilltown Pork, about fifteen minutes away, so the pigs are handled with minimal stress. Today Raven & Boar has gone fully nose-to-tail, curing its own pork under the label Hudson Valley Charcuterie, a seasonal, small-batch line of sausages, pâtés, porchetta, and more, even publishing a cookbook with recipes from dozens of chefs. Part of that depth comes from Paul Wetzel, who, after years selecting these very pigs for Gramercy Tavern, left the city to join the Raven & Boar team.
Nose-to-tail
Nose-to-tail is the practice of using the entire animal rather than only prime cuts. For charcuterie, that means curing some cuts, confiting others, turning trim into terrines, pâtés, and sausages, and simmering bones and offal into stocks, an approach that reduces waste and honors the animal.
That reputation has long reached well beyond the valley. Over the years, Raven & Boar’s pork has been sought by acclaimed chefs, among them Dan Barber at Blue Hill, his celebrated farm-to-table restaurant at Stone Barns, and Daniel Boulud’s charcuterie-centric Bar Boulud. So the next time you build a plate of charcuterie with a few artisan cheeses and a good glass of wine, you can taste the whole chain behind it, from happy, well-raised pigs to the cured meat itself.
Frequently Asked Questions
🐖 Hudson Valley Charcuterie, at a Glance
A quick reference to the people, places, and craft behind the plate.
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Anchor farm | Raven & Boar, East Chatham, NY, woman-owned and farmer-operated. |
| The pigs | Heritage breeds, silvo-pastured and whey-fed on about 100 acres. |
| Whey source | Local cheesemakers, including Twin Maple Farm in Ghent, NY. |
| Own label | Hudson Valley Charcuterie, seasonal small-batch cured pork. |
| The catalyst | A Glynwood master class with charcutier Francois Vecchio. |
| Key makers | Paul Wetzel (Raven & Boar), Scott Bridi (Brooklyn Cured). |
| A chef’s table | Jeff Gimmel’s Swoon Kitchenbar, Hudson, NY, since 2004. |
| The tradition | Whey-fed pork echoes Italy’s prosciutto di Parma. |
