Cristiano Creminelli, who has helped Tony Caputo’s Market and Deli establish a hugely successful salumificio where Italian salami, sausages, and other pork meats are handcrafted on site, has been nominated by the Utah Slow Food Convivium to be its representative artisan at the first-ever Slow Food Nation festival on Labor Day weekend in San Francisco.

Creminelli epitomizes the “good, clean and fair” standards of the slow food movement. As noted previously in this blog, Creminelli’s salami is no ordinary product, reflecting a family tradition which began in the Piedmont region — the birthplace of the International Slow Food Movement — in the early 1900s and a culinary genetic history which spans at least five centuries. For example, the pork for Creminelli’s products comes from a Utah source — at a farm in Logan, just a little more than 80 miles to the north of Salt Lake City. “It was perfect,” Matt Caputo recalled during an interview last September. “No hormones. No antibiotics. No growth stimulants. Farmers took three times as long to allow pigs to get to their slaughtering weight. They were given all-organic feed and they lived in immaculate conditions.”

Creminelli also works with herbs, truffles, and other ingredients that come from ideally sustainable, agriculturally-responsible sources. As noted last fall, just one small sign of the care taken to create exceptional meats is Cristiano’s dedicated schedule of checking on the freshly made salami that have just been placed in one of the curing cells at Caputo’s store. The process involves checking on air and humidity conditions in the cell seven times a day at the beginning of the curing process, including at least four times during the night. Awkward as it may seem, “sleeping with the salami” is essential to ensuring a product that befits the family name.

Slow Food Nation, a companion nonprofit organization to Slow Food USA, will hold the festival August 29-September 1 with an estimated 60,000 people expected to attend. The event will be held at two Frisco locations: the Civic Center and the Fort Mason Center.

On a related note, Caputo’s is nearing the end of a major renovation that will include new deli seating, a cheese cave, and a first-rate marketplace showcasing not only fine Italian and Spanish food products but also Creminelli’s meats and Christopher Blue’s equally popular handmade chocolates. In the Intermountain West region, Caputo’s is on par — if not exceeding in some areas — with the famous, well-storied Zingerman’s delicatessen in Ann Arbor, near the University of Michigan campus. Utah’s culinary stock is indeed rising fast.