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Embutidos Artesanos Melsa

Graus, Spain

One of the three houses that make Longaniza de Graus, run by the Egea family and now in its fifth and sixth generations. Town records certify the family's butchery from 1860, and the shop on Calle Barranco dates from 1933. Hams were once the main business, about 20,000 a year, until a change in curing rules in the 1980s pushed the company to reinvent itself. Longaniza now makes up about half of sales, in a range of more than 60 cured meats. Its recipe adds garlic, nutmeg, rosemary and thyme to the pepper and salt. A second shop stands on Avenida Goya in Zaragoza.

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Sausages from Embutidos Artesanos Melsa

Longaniza de Graus

Ribagorza, Aragon, Spain

A pink pork sausage from Graus, a town in the Aragonese foothills of the Pyrenees, tied into a horseshoe and sold both fresh and air-dried. The colour gives away its main rule: no paprika, which sets it apart from the red chorizos of the rest of Spain and from Chile's longaniza. At least 70% of the filling is lean pork. The seasoning changes from house to house, built on pepper and salt with some mix of oregano, nutmeg, clove, anise or sweet wine. Three companies make it under a shared collective trademark, and once a year the town grills one sausage nearly a kilometre long in the street.

porkfreshcured