The Alpujarra cured hams are pretty damned famous and their popularity goes back quite a while, but were you aware just how long? One professor at the Granada University, Juan González Blasco, unearthed a document at the Casa de las Indias, dated 1581, giving details of the first shipment of Alpujarra hams to the New World!
The shipment originated in Mecina del Buen Varón, later to become with the course of time, Mecina Bombarón. The letter was a request from Sebastián Pliego to his goodly wife, María Díaz, back home in the Alpujarra for ‘three cured hams,’ bless his cotton socks, which she was to bring out with her, accompanied by her brother.
The letter, besides making sure that they were suitably armed with porky comestibles (xamones de tocino, as they were known then), also gave instructions on the voyage, things to take, not to take, to do and not to do, because the Atlantic crossing wasn’t exactly a doddle.
He gave her instructions to purchase in Sevilla for the voyage: twelve skins of drinking water, chickpeas, ship biscuit, wine, olive oil and a bloody great trunk with a bombproof padlock to store it all in because, as he warned her, some light-finger wave jockey would steal the lot before you could cry, “Land Ahoy!”