How Many Salamis?

I'm much more interested in quality than quantity. But since we have only two confirmed bookings on the Advanced Salumi Course Tuscany in January 2023 and none on the March course, I've begun to wonder whether the market is saturated.

Massimo Bacci's maturing room in November 2010

Has everyone on the planet who wants to make Italian salumi already done our courses?
How many courses have we actually run since the launch in November 2010?
​Should we be celebrating our 50th course or is it more or less?

Our first group of salumi students in November 2010

I admit I got a bit obsessed with the numbers. And I'm surprised by the results.

Total number of Advanced Salumi Courses
Tuscany: 48 since launch in November 2010
Bologna-Parma: 7 since launch in January 2017

Total number of participants
Tuscany: 246
Bologna-Parma: 27

Pretty impressive, but what really surprised me were the number of nationalities represented by the participants. 

37 countries represented on our salumi courses

Thirty-seven countries! You'll notice a little cheating: the four 'kingdoms' of the United Kingdom are tallied separately, but I was curious about how many people came from each. Now I wonder: have we contributed positively to international relations?

On the course in January 2013 the score was: Ireland-3, England-2, USA-2

Purely in terms of numbers the US outdistances the rest, but as a percentage of the total population England must be the winner. When I first moved to Cambridge (England) in 1967, there were several dedicated pork butchers in the town. I don't know of any now. Perhaps today's butchers, pig farmers and chefs yearn to re-establish that tradition of curing pork but in a manner reflective of our more international outlook. In the realm of salumi, by which I mean dry cured pork as opposed to cooked dishes so common in France, no nationality merits emulating more than the Italians.

How much superb salumi have we tasted on our courses? Like this from one of our instructors, Ismaele Turri, on our course in March 2013.

Returning to the question in the title: how many salamis? I don't have a record of how many salamis our participants have made over the years. Hundreds? Thousands?

Salamis of March 2011 course at Ismaele Turri, not counting the ones we made with Massimo Bacci

So, is the market completely saturated? Or is this just the lull in the eye of the storm? Are bookings for February 2023 in Bologna and Parma and March in Tuscany about to come flooding in? These are questions for you, my readers. 

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Some other salumi blogs from the early days of the course you might be interested in:
Moments of Glory
​From Pig to Salumi
Salumi Course in Tuscany
February—Learning the Art of Prosciutto in Emilia