About Us

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Maybe this is in the category of too much information, but if you are really interested in us and what we do, a very entertaining way to find out more is James Beard Award nominee Michael Gebert's short film, which you can find here, posted on Vimeo (requires a high-speed internet connection).  Find Michael's other work at his website, Sky Full of Bacon.

Our Mission

We believe that the food we eat can delight us every day. It is our mission to help you make that happen. With each product, we strive to offer a memorable eating experience, one that causes you stop and savor the moment. Great food is more than great taste. It is healthful, nutritious, and pleasurable. It is satisfying sensually, physically, emotionally, and intellectually. It tastes good and it feels good. It pleases and it nourishes. It is part of a responsible food system that sustains you, producers, craftspeople, restaurants, and stores who support their communities and respect the environment.

Great food is made from the highest quality materials, careful adherence to the best of tradition, and the judicious use of modern tools. La Quercia incorporates these principles in determining how we produce and what we select to offer. We also strive to provide service that will make you want to work with us: good information, on-time delivery, proper promotion and product support, and timely, considerate, and accurate communications. We started La Quercia to create premium quality American prosciutto. Our appreciation for prosciutto grew out of the three and a half years we lived in Parma, Italy, prosciutto's area of origin. Our ambition to create our own came from our desire to take the bounty that surrounds us in Iowa to its highest expression. We seek to contribute to the growth of premium artisan-made American foods by offering fine quality, dry cured meats -- and Iowa with its abundance is the natural place to do this.

Our Founders

Herb and Kathy Eckhouse founded La Quercia and work in all aspects of the business–selecting and buying pork, salting, trimming, and handling hams and leading the small group of dedicated staff who participate in our production.

Herb-kathy-eckhouse 

Kathy worked as a ranch hand and then as a researcher in Agricultural Economics at the University of California at Berkeley before she made home making and mothering her primary occupation. Now, daughter Laurel is pursuing a PhD in Political Science at UC Berkeley after her years with Teach for America and as an Outward Bound trip leader; daughter Sara is now working at the USDA in Marketing and Research Programs.  She was a Field Organzer in Ohio for Obama for America after coming back to the US from two years of  working for Darly Stables in Newmarket, England, and New Zealand Olympic equestrian Bruce Goodin in Sweden; and son Aaron is a sophomore at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and works part time for La Quercia.  He is the company demo champion.

A long time "foodie" (Berkeley born and raised) who lived in Europe for several years as a child and adolescent, she is the person all of her friends describe as the best cook they know. She adds intuition and a fine food sense developed through years of making bread and pasta, inventing recipes, and reading cookbooks. "I feel good about what we do, because we use pork from animals that have had a good life. I think prosciutto is a great thing for a well-raised pig to become."

For Herb, this is his fifth career. Before he and Kathy designed and built their prosciuttificio, he spent 5 years researching, experimenting, learning and making prosciutto at home. "When I started looking into it, I kept on finding positive signs. Prosciutto is healthy and nutritious and adds quality and craft to a busy life; it's a clean process and it offers varied and healthful work for the artisans involved. I love making prosciutto; it's like assisting at a miracle."

Our Team

We have a great team of dedicated people–Mike, Gladis, Antonio, Johnny J, Maria, Marcella, Nick, Blanca, Juan, Joselito, Johnny I, Bernardino, Peggy, Armando, Jose, Laura, Enrique, Marta, and Kendra--who learned the intricate work of making delicious prosciutto with us. No detail is too small to be examined and all practices are subject to review and re-evaluation. We always appreciate feedback--we learn from what you like or don't like.  Mike started at La Quercia after 20+ years working with fresh meat--cutting, trimmming, QA, and management. He started on the construction crew that built our prosciuttificio and worked with our Italian supplier to install the equipment they supplied for our specialized rooms. He's been here since the first piece of meat came in the door and keeps the place on keel and clean. Mike says, "Making Prosciutto Americano is an art form which I find very satisfying. At day's-end I feel that I helped to create a quality, world class product."  

HappyAtLaQuercia

Our Name

La Quercia (pronounced La Kwair-cha with a slight roll of the r if you can do it) means the Oak in Italian.

The Oak

The Oak is a traditional symbol of the province of Parma (where we lived) and, through its acorns, has been associated with the history of prosciutto for 500 years. It is also the state tree of Iowa. The name unites Iowa, Parma, and prosciutto, and is a symbol of patience, persistence, integrity and beauty -- values which guide us.

Greening

Here we have news about how we are trying to make our operations and activities more sustainable and with a lower carbon footprint. The big transformative changes come rarely, so we try to make progress step by step.

  • We've landsaped using low maintenance prairie grasses, native flowers and oak trees.  See Kathy's post--"Oak Savannah" --for more information. 
  • 09.PrairiePlanting  
  • We made choices with the packaging for our sliced meats to reduce waste.  We use: 
    • Lighter plastic films to avoid putting more plastic in landfills 
    • Pre-printed top film so that we don't need a separate label which is one more piece of plastic to be thrown away. 
    • Biodegradable, compostable interleaving.   
  • We buy our meat on a sustainability basis--it is not sustainable agriculture if our suppliers go out of business.  So we work with them on a cost-plus basis, independent of pork commodity prices (which are now extremely low).  
  • We eliminated small product stickers on our boxes, are using a stamp (instead of a sticker) for our return address on our boxes, and eliminated the decorative nets on our La Quercia Rossa Heirloom Prosciutto, Prosciutto Piccante, and Speck Americano. 
  • We've been able to focus our meat supply, so that all of our meat comes from slaughter houses within 200 miles of our prosciuttificio. Most of the pigs are raised within that radius also.
  • We've gone to unbleached boxes that have a minimum of 90% recycled content. It can be up to 100%, but we can't get a guarantee of that at this point.
  • PlantClose_in Full_view
    We opened Prosciuttificio "La Quercia" in February, 2005. We built it with energy efficient materials and use the latest, "greenest" refrigerant. Our new construction incorporates high density, non-ozone depleting polyurethane foam; Freon R404A; heat recovery from the refrigeration compressors to provide most of the heating, and computer optimized compressors to minimize horsepower on-line.
  • Sustainability is also about the people--this is one of the themes that Kathy has been very strong on, and we were pleased to see that it was highlighted at Slow Food Nation. We participate with a "coemployment" company that enables us to offer health benefits.


Our Suppliers

All of the pork we use comes from suppliers who subscribe to humane practices. To us this means that the animals have access to the out of doors, have room to move around and socially congregate, and root in deep bedding. We do not use meat from animals that have been given sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics, kept in large animal confinement facilities, fed animal byproducts, or given hormones or synthetic hormones.  

  • Our organic prosciutto and our La Quercia Acorn Edition meat is being produced by Becker Lane Organic Farm. This is a great place, run by sixth generation farmer Jude Becker. Pasture raised, acorn fed, organic, Berkshire--it doesn't get any better than that. Check it out. Becker Lane's website is here.
  • The Organic Valley cooperative provides premium organic Berkshire cross fresh meat for our Organic Pancetta Green Label and our Organic La Quercia Guanciale--Green Label.
  • For La Quercia Rossa cured meats (our Heirloom Culaccia, our new Heirloom Pancetta and our new Heirloom Iowa White) we use 100% Berkshire meat from animals that were raised where they can socially congregate, root, and have access to the out of doors. They have not had subtherapeutic antibiotics and have had no antibiotics at all for at least 100 days prior to harvest. Farmer owned Eden Farms is our primary Berkshire supplier, and you can visit their website here.
  • The meat for our Americano offerings (Prosciutto Americano, Pancetta Americana,and Prosciutto Piccante) is all from antibiotic free, animal by product free, hormone free pork raised where they can socially congregate, root, and have access to the out of doors. Most of it comes from Niman Ranch or farmer owned Heritage Acres.

We work especially closely with our smaller, farmer-owned suppliers, Becker Lane, Eden Farms, and Heritage Acres.   It is not sustainable agriculture if they go out of business, so instead of commodity market based pricing, we work on a negotiated, "fair trade" style price.  They determine how much their farmers need to be paid for their pigs to make a reasonable profit, then how much to charge for the different parts we use, and that's what we pay.  Swings in the commodity market can be ruinous, especially for smaller growers, so this way, we work with the farmer owned marketing companies to insulate the farmers from these risks.      

All of our spices come from Frontier Natural Products Coop except the Pimenton de la Vera from Spain that we use in our Coppa.  Frontier, an Iowa organic icon, searched the world for responsibly produced organic spices.  It helped to build the availability of organic food in the USA by providing key ingredients to companies across the nation . 


Friends

Restaurants

Stores

  • In Iowa The Gateway Markets in the Des Moines Area.
  • Surdyk's in Minneapolis was one of the first to jump on our bandwagon. Thank you Mary!
  • Planet Organics, web based delivery service in the Bay Area.
  • Panozzo's in the South Loop in Chicago--the first retailer in the Chicago area to go with our whole lineup!
  • In the Boston Area:
  • Eat!Drink! in Avon, CO.
  • Fairway Markets, New York. Steve Jenkins called organic La Quercia Prosciutto Green Label the best he'd ever had. He called our pancetta "amazing!" Check out his blog here.
  • Check out the scene in Philadelphia when we went to Di Bruno Bros, the 2006 NASFT Gourmet Retailer of the Year to introduce La Quercia Rossa to their loyal clientele. Hear what DiBruno Brothers' customer Claudia Raab thought here.
  • Balducci's, selected stores.  See what they are telling their customers here (PDF)
  • Whole Foods Market, most locations
  • See what they're saying about La Quercia at the Lamars Street flagship store in Austin, Texas.
  • When we went to the South Street Whole Foods Market in Philadelphia, we stopped in and visited the Prepared Foods Team. Look who we found.
  • Zingerman's Deli, Ann Arbor.
  • The Rustic Bakery is Carol LeValley and Josh Harris's beautiful bakery and cafe in Larkspur.
  • Stinky Brooklyn is a Cobble Hill cheese shop that "proudly sells" our prosciutto.
  • Agata and Valentina in NYC
  • Blue Apron Foods in Brooklyn
  • The Pasta Shop in Berkeley and Rockridge Market Hall in Oakland, California
  • Delessio's Market in San Francisco
  • Piazza Foods in the Bay Area

Just Friends

Robert Parker is the best known wine critic in the US, and a man internationally recognized for his fine palate. He recently did a prosciutto tasting with our La Quercia Rossa and our Prosciutto Americano. You can find more in the What We Make section or in Prosciuttopia.

Alisa Barry the founder of Bella Cucina Artful Food was one of the first people to listen to us and help us find our way in the specialty food world, for which we are always appreciative. Please check out the Bella Cucina website here.

Smith Hanes is Alisa's partner and was a major design force behind the beautiful presentation of Bella Cucina. He's now got his own design firm going. Check it out here.

Mary Beth Clark of New York runs the The International Cooking School of Italian Food and Wine in Bologna. It looks like a beautiful program.

Larry Theobald of Cycle Italia sent us a letter offering us "Complimenti." Check out what he does here.