Cinco Jotas

Cinco Jotas traces its founding to 1879, when the ancestors of today's owners opened what the company describes as the first operation dedicated entirely to a pure Iberian acorn-fed pig, in Jabugo, a town in Huelva's Sierra de Aracena. The venture grew from a partnership among the Sánchez Romero family and ham specialists Manuel Romero and Vicente Carvajal, whose combined surnames still identify the parent company, Sánchez Romero Carvajal.

The hams cure in what the company calls centuries-old cellars built into Jabugo's particular microclimate, a combination it credits for the character of the finished product. Production runs by hand and is measured in years rather than months, and the pigs are raised on a deliberately limited scale under acorn-fed (bellota) standards the company says exceed Spain's official Black Label minimum, alongside stated attention to animal welfare during rearing.

Today Cinco Jotas sells whole jamón, paleta, lomo, and cured sausage through its own online shop, restaurants, and cellar-visit experiences, in addition to wholesale distribution, and remains headquartered in Jabugo — the town most closely identified with the ibérico category as a whole. It is one of the reference houses the category's own anchor documentation names outright, and this record closes the gap of it having been absent from the registry.