{"id":2443789,"date":"2019-05-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-06T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=305319"},"modified":"2019-05-06T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-06T06:00:00","slug":"business-monday-basalt-salami-facility-grinds-away-for-a-big-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/business-monday-basalt-salami-facility-grinds-away-for-a-big-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Business Monday: Basalt salami facility grinds away for a big future"},"content":{"rendered":"
Il Porcellino Salumi president and owner Bill Miner at the Basalt wholesale facility.<\/strong>
Rick Carroll\/The Aspen Times<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On any given week, a facility in a Basalt business complex is cranking out 800 pounds of packed salami. If Bill Miner, president and owner of Il Porcellino Salumi, hits the mark he has set, that number will triple.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got six or seven distributors around the country waiting to drive our product,\u201d said Miner as he inspected some of the cured meats at the company\u2019s wholesale facility on Cody Lane.<\/p>\n

Miner, who runs the Il Porcellino Salumi deli in Berkeley area of Denver, opened up the production operations in Basalt in spring 2018 after building owner Wendy Mitchell offered him the spot.<\/p>\n

Mitchell, no stranger to the charcuterie trade and owner of Meat and Cheese Restaurant & Farm Shop, had made her own meats and cheeses there, so Miner considered it a turnkey deal also because he could inherit Mitchell\u2019s USDA license she\u2019d used for her Avalanche Cheese Co.<\/p>\n

Miner, a chef as well, also has designs to expand the operations in order to accommodate production of 2,400 pounds of meat a week. That would include the addition of deli meats, summer sausages, bacon and other carnivore-friendly food produced at the Basalt facility.<\/p>\n

Il Porcellini gets its Berkshire pork meat from Colorado and Nebraska \u2014 which are fed a non-GMO and vegetarian diet \u2014 and Monday through Friday, the small staff works away on everything from chopping the meat in the sterile confines of the Basalt operation to stuffing all of the salami that\u2019s prepared in different styles \u2014 from \u201cDiablo,\u201d a spicy Italian version, to \u201cBack Truffle,\u201d seasoned with Carboy Malbec Wine and burgundy. The fermentation process to take five or six weeks.<\/p>\n

Il Porcellini also can claim some bragging rights, such as its Spiced Juniper winning the 2018 Charcuterie Masters Grand Champion in New York.<\/p>\n

Miner spends much of his time in Denver, but he regularly checks in on the Basalt post, where Patrick Kennedy, once the salumiere and cheese-maker at Meat & Cheese, helped as operations manager for the Basalt facility\u2019s first six months. He now works in Denver. Miner also hired Phillip House, who\u2019d been a chef in Aspen, as the Basalt facility\u2019s wholesale production manager.<\/p>\n

Having run the Il Porcellino retail shop in Denver for 31\/2 years, Miner said the opening wholesale facility was a natural progression.<\/p>\n

\u201cCured meats has always been the basis of the business,\u201d he said. \u201cWe wanted to do wholesale, but it happened quicker than we expected.\u201d<\/p>\n

Through their connections, Miner, who is from Ohio, and his team has lined up distribution deals for Il Porcellini products in 20 states. Locally, Aspen establishments such as Little Nell Hotel, Clark\u2019s Market, Butcher\u2019s Block and Meat & Cheese carry Il Porcellini salamis. This summer, Il Porcellini\u2019s salami will be sold at the Aspen Saturday Market and the Basalt Sunday Market.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt this point it\u2019s keeping up with demand,\u201d Miner said, saying he has no desire to sell the business or let it grow so big that the product becomes diluted.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think at some point you see the quality of your product and want to be known for it,\u201d he said. \u201cI want us to be known for a high quality, artisanal product that people seek out. And some of the bigger companies, as they grow to ginormous sizes, they lose the quality control. They still might make decent product, but they lose the quality control, and we don\u2019t want that to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

rcarroll@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Il Porcellino Salumi president and owner Bill Miner at the Basalt wholesale facility.Rick Carroll\/The Aspen Times On any given week, a facility in a Basalt business complex is cranking out 800 pounds of packed salami. If Bill Miner, president and owner of Il Porcellino Salumi, hits the mark he has set, that number will triple. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2443789","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-17 18:22:27","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2443789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2443789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2443789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2443789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2443789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2443789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}