The herd
A rare breed Mangalitsa herd living outdoors in British woodland, five pigs to the acre, foraging acorns and roots through the seasons. Everything we make begins here.
Our pigs live outdoors at Eridge Park Estate in East Sussex, on woodland ground, at five to the acre. It is the slowest and least convenient way to raise a pig, and it is the whole reason the charcuterie tastes the way it does.
Life at Eridge Park
Five pigs to the acre sounds like a small number, and it is meant to. It buys the herd room to root, to wander off, to lie in the shade of the trees and to behave like pigs rather than livestock. There is no indoor phase and no crowding. They are outdoors in all weathers, with arcs for housing, woodland for shelter and the run of the ground beneath it.
They forage alongside their feed: acorns in autumn, roots and mushrooms through the damp months, berries and green growth when the estate offers them. What they find follows the season rather than a feed chart, which means no two batches of charcuterie are quite identical, and we have long since stopped seeing that as a problem.
No shortcuts, no intensive rearing. Just the most natural life a pig can have, and it is why the flavour is like nothing else.
Why slow rearing changes the meat
A pig that grows slowly lays fat down differently. Instead of a thick, soft outer layer you get fat threaded through the muscle in fine seams, firm, clean and deeply flavoured. Charcuterie lives or dies on that fat. It carries flavour, it protects the meat through months of drying, and it is what gives a good slice its softness on the tongue.
Forage does the rest. Acorns and woodland roots give the fat a nutty, faintly sweet character that no bagged ration can imitate. The muscle itself comes out darker and denser than commodity pork, closer in colour to beef, with the kind of structure that rewards long hanging rather than falling apart halfway through it.
What that means on the plate
Cut a slice thin and hold it for a moment before eating. The fat begins to soften at body temperature, which is why the flavour arrives gently and then keeps going long after the slice has gone. There is sweetness in it, and nuttiness, and a savoury depth underneath that only time in the curing room can put there.
It is also why chefs use so little of it at once. Three or four slices will carry a plate. That, in the end, is the argument for slow grown rare breed meat. Not sentiment, but flavour, and the plain fact that you need less of it to make something taste remarkable.
The herd in numbers
