130 years in Guijuelo

When Felipe Hernández Jiménez set up the family’s first permanent production site in Guijuelo in 1890, hams were delivered to the neighbouring villages by cart. He produced four hundred animals a year. One hundred and thirty-five years later, we produce forty thousand pieces a year, we export to more than twelve countries, and the fourth generation of the family runs the day-to-day from Guijuelo, Salamanca. What has not changed in all that time is the place, the method and the obsession.

A date that matters: 1986

In 1984, Felipe Hernández Jiménez — our grandfather — met with a group of producers and farmers in Guijuelo. The sector was making a great deal of product but with little oversight: it needed a body to regulate and protect the hams made in the area, to shield them from imitations and to guarantee buyers exactly what they were getting.

Two years later, in 1986, the Guijuelo Denomination of Origin was born — the first Iberian ham Denomination of Origin in Spain. Hernández Jiménez was one of its founding members. Forty years on, we are still an active part of the Regulatory Council.

Four generations

• First generation · 1890. The activity begins as a permanent operation in Guijuelo.
• Second generation · early 20th century. Production expands and the brand is consolidated.
• Third generation · 1950. Modern facilities are built, technology is brought in and capacity grows without losing the artisanal method.
• Fourth generation · today. María del Mar and Francisco Hernández take over. International expansion: product in more than twelve countries across Europe, the Americas and Asia. A renewed identity, digital modernisation and entry into online markets.

What we do today

We cure Iberian hams, shoulders and cured meats at our facilities in Guijuelo, with no middlemen between the cellar and your home. We buy directly from selected farmers in the dehesas of Salamanca, Extremadura and Andalusia. We slaughter in certified abattoirs, salt with minimal salt, dry in the open air with the windows open during the cold months, and cure for years in a natural cellar at a thousand metres of altitude, on the slopes of the Sierra de Béjar.

Each year some forty thousand hams and shoulders leave our factory, along with traditional cured meats. Every piece passes the controls of the Iberian Pork Quality Standard (Norma del Ibérico) via the HYCER certification body, those of the Castile and León quality mark Tierra de Sabor, and the audits of the Guijuelo PDO — the most demanding denomination of origin for Iberian ham in the country.

Why Guijuelo

Guijuelo lies south-east of Salamanca, a thousand metres above sea level, on the northern buttress of the Sierra de Béjar. Winters are cold and dry, summers short and mild. Between the two mountain ranges runs a characteristic wind regime that sweeps the plateau unobstructed.

Those are exactly the conditions an Iberian ham needs to cure slowly and well. They make it possible to keep salt to a minimum and let time do the rest. Slow, natural curing is what gives Guijuelo ham its sweet flavour, its characteristically low saltiness and the unctuousness you only get when the fat from the acorns has redistributed itself through the piece over months.

This is not marketing. It is geography applied to a food.

What we don’t do

We don’t take shortcuts. We don’t shorten the cure to get product out sooner. We don’t use industrial drying rooms with forced temperature. We don’t put product from outside Guijuelo under our brand. We don’t sell to opaque intermediaries: our ham leaves the factory bound for your home, without passing through middle warehouses where traceability gets lost.

If you have any problem with a piece you have received, we refund your money or send you another. Always. There is no fine print.

Direct contact with the family

F. Hernández Jiménez e Hijos S.L. Pol. Agroalim. c/ Sierra de Tonda, 15 37770 Guijuelo · Salamanca Tel. +34 923 58 02 23 Get in touch →