Jamon Ibérico di Bellota. Deep-red, staggeringly expensive ham (selling for upwards of $70 a pound) made from acorn-fed pigs raised on Spain’s Iberian peninsula. Described by those who have tasted it as the orgasmic apotheosis of what pig-eating can entail, Jamon Ibérico has engendered an outright Snob frenzy with the news that the U.S.D.A. has approved its import into the United States as of the middle of 2008—thereby making possible (at a steep price) an experience previously restricted to rich tourists on vacation in Spain and naughty U.S. chefs who’ve smuggled a ham or two through customs. In the reprehensible world of hedge-fund-underwritten Food Snobbery, people are paying three to four figures to reserve their own hams for 2008-09 delivery.
