cut & dried
Venison charcuterie-maker
says cheers to craft beers
making more of british & continental charcuterie
Interview The Real Cure’s James Smart tells MICK WHITWORTH how artisan charcuterie is following craft brewers in
reinventing classic products for a new generation
I
James Smart:
‘Whatever we make,
we can sell’
meat going, but
it’s under-used and
under-valued.”
Moving to
London, he started
making salami at
home. “I got very
anoraky about it,”
he says, “and after
about two years
the idea came to
try to make it into a
business.”
He continues:
“Our USP is that we don’t use pork.
We only use wild deer from Dorset,
and we try to use Sika because
they put on a lot of fat – you can
get 1.5ins of fat on the haunches –
which means we can make sausages
and burgers for events too.”
These have represented the
bulk of sales so far, but Smart says
charcuterie is where he wants the
business to go. “The shows are
necessary for cash flow but we really
want to be selling charcuterie in
grows the cured meats business.
“We see what’s happening with
charcuterie as a bit like the craft
brewing movement,” he tells me.
“It’s taking a product that already
exists and tweaking it. In the States,
they looked at our bitter beer and
started messing about and doing
crazy things with it.
“That’s how we see it going with
charcuterie. If you look at what’s
made on the Continent, it’s amazing
stuff but they haven’t changed the
recipes in 200 years.”
The Real Cure’s
most obvious point
A lot of craft beers have labels
of difference is
that are classy but also fun and
its exclusive use
vibrant – that’s what we wanted
of venison for its
meat products – a
places we’re proud to be seen in.”
link back to Smart’s early career. “I
Last year, with grant funding
studied ecology at uni,” he explains,
from North Dorset District Council,
“then worked for a year on a
he set up a production unit on his
126,000 acre estate in Sutherland.
parents farm, including a small
A lot of its income came from deer
chamber for fermenting, drying and
shooting, but I saw that a lot of the
maturing and a home-built smoker.
meat w \