…or I’ll be bursting at the seams before this weekend! French Savoy makes part of the galaxy of sausage heavens and when you come home after a long day of skiing, hungry as a hunter, you don’t say no to a good slice of bread and a slab of air-dried or smoked saucisson or jambon, would you? Or when you walk down the main street of Les Saisies high up in the mountains, how could you miss Régis Bozon’s butcher boutique? Of course you’d enter. And like me you’d find this:

Sausage heaven I: Bozon's shop in Savoy.:

And, a bit further to the right, this:

Sausage heaven II: with pepper, with fruit, with cheese.

Looks like an old Dutch master painting, doesn’t it? Yet it’s just a butcher’s shop. Filled with the smells, no, the fragrances of perfectly cured ham, of air-dried delicacies in any state of matter: still fresh and soft the Saucisson d’Alpage, firmer and almost mature the Saucisson sèche, fully ripened and hard-cured the Saucisson au poivre, it’s a symphony. You can even find sausages stuffed with Beaufort cheese or nuts or fruit (I don’t like these too much; to me, they’re aberrance).

Monsieur Bozon is a lovely man, as you would expect, always ready for a chat. He told me that his hams are smoked over juniper for two weeks before air-drying for another 20 months. Can you imagine the taste? You can’t. You have to come to France. To French Savoy. You better hurry up!