Maybe, they said, they could make prosciutto. Most of their friends weren’t even sure what it was.

Mr. Eckhouse left Pioneer in mid-2000 and spent the rest of that year preparing what his wife calls “his master’s thesis on prosciutto.” It was a practical, if hopeful, plan for making something new of a 2,000-year-old meat. They were inspired by the American evolution of other European products like cheese, wine and craft beer.

They named their new venture La Quercia (pronounced la KWAIR-cha), which means oak, a reference to the ancient oak savannas of Italy as well as the savannas of Iowa, where the oak is the state tree.

Still, Mr. Eckhouse’s credentials as Herb-the-hayseed-from-Iowa don’t hold up under close inspection. He grew up in Winnetka, an affluent North Shore suburb of Chicago, and graduated from Harvard, which he is careful never to mention. Mrs. Eckhouse, 63, was raised in Berkeley, Calif., and attended Idaho State University while she worked as a cowgirl on her aunt’s ranch. They met during his post-Harvard year as a ski bum, as he puts it.

They worked for her aunt for a few years, during which Mr. Eckhouse, in an early sign of resourcefulness, came up with a project: They would buy a run-down log cabin and move it to the ranch. They lettered, numbered and color-coded the logs, reassembling them after the move. “He did the wiring,” Mrs. Eckhouse said. “He did everything but dig the well. You know how he did it? This is the thing that got me. He went to the library and checked books out. And I thought, ‘This guy really thinks he can do anything.’ ”

Still, the decision years later to go ahead with the prosciutto venture was “gut-wrenching,” Mr. Eckhouse said. “We put everything on the line.”