Pricey Pork

There is a new ham in town. Billed as the most expensive ham in history, the 2006 Alba Quercus Reserve ham will cost just about $2,100 each - or around $160 per pound. You have to buy the entire ham, you can't get a slice.

Now, hard-core foodies are drooling over the prospect of something truly superlative from Spain, at least in price: a salt-cured ham costing about $2,100 per leg, or a cruel $160 per pound. It's a price believed to make it the most expensive ham in the world.

Don't grab your wallet just yet. And forget about asking for just a slice.

The 2006 Alba Quercus Reserve (as this pricey pork will be known) won't be available until late 2008 and you must buy the whole ham or nothing at all. But that hasn't dissuaded gastronomic Web sites and blogs from buzzing with talk of the farm where it is being produced, likening it to a Mount Olympus of pork.

Its mastermind, Manuel Maldonado, 44, comes from a long line of ham producers in a country that's nuts about the stuff. In bars and restaurants, legs of ham hanging from the wall are as common as TV sets.

But Maldonado is taking the art of the ham to new heights, pampering his pigs with a free-range lifestyle and top-quality diet of acorns before slaughtering them, then curing the meat for two years _ twice as long as his competitors.

It's that last step that Maldonado credits with creating a delicacy that justifies the heavenly price.

When informed about the costly ham, several Congressmen raised their heads from the trough long enough to snort that their pork costs much, much more.