❦ Curated

Brétema de Wagyu

Wagyu Cecina, Castilian Air-Cure

€39.90

Wagyu beef, air-cured the Castilian way cecina has always been made, sliced gossamer-thin so the marbling dissolves the moment it hits the tongue.

Origin España

Producer Jamones Asle

Volume 130 g

Appearance

Dark mahogany flesh marbled with translucent ribbons of melting fat

Aroma

Roasted beef, dry-aged umami, faint iron, butterfat

Taste · Primary

Long dry-aged beef glutamate, soft salt

Taste · Secondary

Wagyu butterfat creaminess, faint nut, mineral-iron close

Texture

Gossamer-thin slice that translucently dissolves on the tongue

Finish

Long, beefy-buttery, with a clean savoury close

FROM OUR TABLECuatro LunasOrganic Semi-Cured Manchego DOP

FROM OUR TABLELa Mimosa 1925Orange & Cava Marmalade

Cecina is the Castilia-Leon tradition of air-curing salted beef from mature mountain cattle, the spiritual sibling of prosciutto, built on beef rather than pork.

Jamones Asle applies that technique to the marbled flesh of Wagyu beef, whose intramuscular fat dissolves below body temperature and whose oleic-acid character mirrors that of bellota Ibérico pork. The combination of Castilian salt-cure and Wagyu marbling produces meat that reads as a hybrid of cecina and prosciutto, with a creamy oleic richness no European cured beef can match. Sliced gossamer-thin, dark mahogany, shot through with translucent ribbons that liquefy on the tongue.

The Producer

Jamones Asle - España

Jamón ibérico de bellota sits at the apex of cured-pork production, and Jamones Asle is the Spanish house behind it. The pig is the cerdo ibérico, the black-hoofed pata negra breed that has roamed the dehesa, the oak savannah of western Spain, for at least three millennia. During the montanera, October to February, the animal feeds exclusively on acorns and pasture grasses. After slaughter the leg is salted, washed and aged in temperature-controlled secaderos and natural bodegas for at least three years, often longer for the bellota grade. Jamones Asle applies the same patience to loin cuts and, more unusually, to Wagyu beef cecina.

Breed Cerdo ibérico, pata negra

Feed Acorn and pasture, montanera season

Ageing 3+ years in secadero and bodega

Range Ham, loin cuts, Wagyu cecina

The Process

A Castilian technique, a Japanese breed.

Cecina is traditionally beef from mature mountain cattle, salted and air-dried the way jamón is dried, but built on beef instead of pork. Jamones Asle applies that same technique to Wagyu, whose oleic-acid-rich marbling is stable enough to survive the long open-air cure without turning rancid. The result reads as part cecina, part prosciutto, sliced gossamer-thin so the fat can dissolve on contact.

Tradition Castilian-Leonese cecina

Breed Wagyu beef

Fat High oleic-acid, stable under air-cure

Slice Gossamer-thin

“We took a Castilian technique built for mountain cattle and asked what it could do with Wagyu. This is the answer.”

Jamones Asle · España