The idea of Sergio Boschetti, 59 years old, Bresciano of Gussago, to start making salami in Las Galeras, in the province of Samana, in the Dominican Republic, where it is always summer and temperatures vary between 23 and 30° all year round, it makes you think. It's not the first. Already a Friulian butcher, Domenico Forgiarini, of Tolmezzo, who emigrated first to Canada and then in Jamaica, in Negril, there was resurrected in 2015 but mainly making sausages. The problem is not the humidity but the heat.
In the Caribbean it is always summer, the temperature fluctuates between 23 and 30°, summer and winter, with high humidity, tempered by the trade winds, which blow through the very pure air, arriving from the Atlantic Ocean. For this reason it has been relatively easy for our compatriots to reproduce sausages, hams and cheeses according to our traditions and technologies in countries such as Northern Europe or in some places in the United States, Canada and Argentina while it seems an impossible undertaking in the tropics.
Producing a grana cheese (Gran Moravia) in the Czech Republic, as Roberto Brazzale from Vicenza, historical producer of Grana Padano, does for example, it maintains the typology of the Italian product and lowers production costs, favoring the marketing of the product. Machinery, know-how, guide remain Italian, only production is relocated but an otherwise destined to end activity is kept alive. After the sanctions imposed on Russia, many Italian producers have suffered enormous damage from the collapse of exports. The same Italians have transferred some work stages to Russia, circumventing the sanctions and producing for that market. It will be impossible to recover exports, when the sanctions are dropped, the damage is done. The market was asking for those products and now they will be produced directly in Russia, according to the Made in Italy: but in a new version. This is how the market is evolving.
Excellent products are not always found in Punto Italia
The Dominican Republic, with a population of 10 million, is home to many foreign residents. Apart from about a million Haitians, many of whom are irregular, the majority of residents, or present, due to the holiday homes in which they have invested, are about 500.000, of whom Americans and Canadians in the majority, then come Spaniards, South Americans , other Europeans and also around 50.000 Italians, of which only 6.000 are registered with Aire. There is therefore a local market for European-style food research which manifests itself in supermarkets and in the presence of numerous Italian or fake Italian restaurants.
Procuring our best quality wines and our best cured meats, pastas, sauces, cakes and cheeses, however, is not easy. These are products that you can't find everywhere and they are very expensive. In the "Point Italy” or similar, import shops of the Made in Italy:, you find an average product, where the compromise between being Italian and costing less, is easier to sell. But it is clear that those with a good mouth are not satisfied.
Drying of hams in the cave
Sergio Boschetti wants to go further. He is a confectionery entrepreneur, with a well-established factory of bases for sweets, the Ancient Hermitage of Bellingo, who at a certain point in his life got tired of being subjected to the rhythms of work and thought that life is worth living, without being a slave to schedules, meetings, continuous heavy taxes and files in car. He discovered the beauty of this corner of the Dominican Republic and decided to move there in 2008, creating a new family. He built a tourist village (Las Galeras Village) starting from a hill, where there is a large plant, perhaps one Soap dish or a "Sapindus saponaria", a tree that can reach 12 meters in height, which dominates the landscape all around, up to the ocean, which is no more than a kilometer away.
Here he found the right energy and inspiration. He discovered a river of potable water flowing 65m underground and thought he'd give it a go also independent from the supply of electricity, with photovoltaic panels, which provide him with 1600 kW per month. With all this he manages a village surrounded by nature, with a main villa and one for guests, plus 9 fully equipped villas, a large swimming pool, a riding stable, a vegetable garden and a restaurant that serves the customers of the village and another restaurant (I like it) in the country, where you eat Italian and learn to dance salsa e Bachata. Generally the clients are his former employees or friends and acquaintances from his homeland but word gets around and the circle is getting bigger and bigger.
Sergio, like a good Italian, loves the pleasures of the table, tries never to miss out on the excellent ones Baroli, Gewurztraminer, Vermentini di Gallura, Brunelli di Montalcino, Satin Franciacorta, good Prosecco from Cartizze, Amarone, including champagne such as Chateneuf du Pape, Moet & Chandon and so on, almost untraceable on site. At his table you will find Cabras bottarga, prized white truffles, good artisan pastas, Friulian hams, sweets, in short, everything he has always enjoyed in the past and which he also considered worthy of his new life in the Caribbean. But how to get them? Either it's friends who bring these delicacies on their travels from Italy or it's onerous shipments of products that he has to resort to. But the entrepreneur does not stop in front of a difficulty and is always someone who must overcome the challenge.
Cured meats and cheeses are dried in the Cueva
On his 35.000 mXNUMX estate he discovers an underground cave, here they are called caves and the country is full of them. Once the ancient Indians “Tainos” they sheltered from the sun and bad weather. In fact, there was no shortage of rainstorms and even hurricanes, today much reduced, now traveling on offshore routes, in the ocean. Sergio saw in his cave an ideal cave for storing wines and he also thought about doing it a place for maturing cured meats and cheeses. In the meantime, he has equipped it with a plan for welcoming friends and tasting imported products, but given its natural ventilation and the humidity of the rocks, he is equipping it so that it can be transformed into a room with a controlled temperature (about 20°), with the 'help from a food technologist, specialized in meat preservation, also director of his Italian company: Ivano Lattucchella.
While waiting to study the most appropriate way to make your sausages and small salami and keep them jealously in the cave, in the meantime he got himself a crank cast iron sausage filler, he created a tool that looks like a cage, where he has already experienced the smoking of a truffle cheese (with tuscan truffle flakes not with chemicals) and where he intends to smoke some of the fish he, with his Sardinian friends, goes fishing in the Atlantic Ocean (tuna, bluemarlin, garfish...).
The big Sapindus saponaria tree
With a local dairy he began to produce tasty fiordilatte, which he uses in the restaurant of his Village and with the milk he recovers from local farmers, he tries to produce other cheeses he is fond of, one of which he named Galzola, or a gorgonzola made in Las Galeras. In the absence of meadows there are no sheep to produce pecorino but goats and goats could be a new target. For cow's milk cheeses, however, there is no shortage of examples. In the Sosua area – Puerto Plata, other Italian entrepreneurs are reproposing burrata, cow's milk mozzarella and milk "cherries". that sell a lot all over the country: Fabrizio Paolucci's Zarina and Renzo Oliva's she-wolf.
Other Italian producers bought farms (farms) to produce rocket, chicory, broccoli, black cabbage and other exquisite local vegetables with which to make dishes with an unmistakable Italian flavour. If the product doesn't arrive from Italy, it is made on the spot, it costs less and, sometimes, it's even better. There are also those who exploit cocoa (Danilo Vestri) and the local coffee (Daltam with Maurice Dallago), of excellent quality, to supply your Italian company with a raw material grown and produced according to our skills, a form of integration between cultures that improves the product and the trade. There are also Italians who help local producers to improve their typical products, it is done with bananas (Montecristi) but also with ginger, again on the Samana peninsula there is Route of the Jengribe (coordinated by Michael Falaschi), putting our creativity and expertise at their service.
Maybe the future of Made in Italy it is no longer so much in producing the entire cycle of a product in Italy but in maintaining the idea, knowledge and technology and finding forms of production integration on our products and local raw materials, which allow us to get anywhere with competitive prices and evading duties, regardless of where it is physically produced.
