AIn the end, the Berkel is a machine that cuts ham. No more and no less. A Bentley is a car that takes occupants from A to B, and a Harley is a motorized seat on two wheels. You can see it that way. But we don’t see it that way. Such products are about lifestyle, eroticism, beauty, value and of course also about luxury. If you want to understand and evaluate the fascination for slicing machines from Berkel, you have to touch and use it. Most people will then keep spinning the wheel. If you keep the crank in your hand like an organ grinder to keep the entire mechanism of the machine in motion, the spark quickly jumps over.
It can just as quickly go out again when you look at the price tag. The machine as it stands in front of us in the Palatina workshop costs 9,450 euros. Jörg Beyer has all the Berkel models in a showroom in Großkarlbach, Palatinate, where you can examine them and try them out with dried Tyrolean bacon or dry-aged ham from Italy. We worked on the B114, it is the flagship of the Volano range. The B2, B3 and Tribute are also a few sizes smaller, but still in the thousands in terms of price.
.