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Charcuterie connoisseurs, rejoice: Spain’s famed jamón ibérico, a luxury cured ham, has arrived in the States. Up until this point, the USDA has shunned this product on account of being skeeved out by its curing methods, as making it basically involves hanging hunks of raw salted pork out to dry for anywhere from 9 months to 2 years or more.

However, due to the efforts of Don and Ruth Harris (co-owners of online Spanish gourmet store La Tienda), a family business in western Spain has tweaked its facilities and curing process to meet the USDA’s standards. The first jamón ibérico hit US stores in December 2007, while the prized bellota variety is scheduled to make its stateside debut in July 2008.

The bellota ham is to Spain roughly what Kobe beef is to Japan. It’s made from pigs who spend their pampered — albeit short — lives wandering around “specially maintained oak forests,” gorging themselves on acorns. Here’s a particularly vivid description of the setup, from this WSJ article:

Jamon Iberico “bellota,” which La Tienda also will be importing, can be thought of as the holy grail with a halo. It comes from Iberian pigs that toward the end of their free-range lives eat up to 20 pounds of acorns (bellotas) a day. Noting the premise that calm pigs have the best meat, Harris describes how, on their last day, these pigs “have Mozart played to them and are given hot showers,” then are gently euthanized (”sacrificed” is the Spaniards’ term) with carbon monoxide.

Wow. Of course, salivating gourmands can always turn to La Tienda as a source for this porcine ambrosia. But if any of you Boston-area foodies need a jamón fix immediately, the kind folks at Formaggio Kitchen will gladly help you out.

Really, the lifting of this restriction really couldn’t have come at a better time — after all, Hardee’s was dangerously close to running out of sodium-larded meat products to cram into its burgers. (Then again, with this pork fetching $100 a pound, you’re probably not going find it under your Monster Thickburger bun anytime soon.)

[Thanks to Apartment Therapy; photo courtesy Flickr user su-lin]