Free little pigs
‘It’s livestock farming at its most holistic,’ Jose Luis Pinto told me as we watched his herd of black Iberian pigs disappear into the dappled shadows of an ancient oak forest. ‘The original Spaniards were raising pigs this way long before the Romans arrived and, essentially, the methods have changed little. The breed itself is only slightly removed from the wild pigs that once roamed here. Their lives are almost identical to those of the wild boar in these same woods and they are still intimately related to a habitat that is purely Iberian.’
Until recently, much of western Spain (and a good part of inland Portugal) was covered by the sparse oak forests that are known as dehesa. This landscape has been a cornerstone of rural life here for centuries. Semi-wild pigs snuffled for acorns, and (wilder still) fighting bulls grazed in the shade. The hardy country folk also foraged here, collecting deadwood for fires, herbs and nuts for sustenance, and oak wood and cork for their huts.
In 63 BC, a Greek geographer wrote that a squirrel could climb a tree beside a beach in southern Spain and, jumping from branch to branch, could travel all the way to the north coast without touching the ground. Many of the extensive forests of western Spain have long since been supplanted by goat-poisoned semi-desert and savannah that is periodically incinerated in rampaging bushfires.
For most of the year, the landscape shimmers under a fireball that is more African than European and the grass is burnt the colour of a lion’s hide. There are brief periods when much-needed rain sends up a sudden rush of lush, green shoots. Then comes the short but unforgiving winter, when bitter winds tear across the open steppes. With seasonal temperatures varying between –10°C and 50°C, it can often seem that the Extremaduran wilderness is totally hostile to both animal and human life.
The cost of deforestation has been immense, with a huge number of Spanish species losing their habitat. The dehesa was once prime territory for healthy populations of lynxes, wolves, wild boar, foxes, deer and even bears, along with countless native and transient bird species. Now experts claim that the future of the remaining forests can only be assured with the help of the humble Iberian pig. The tide is finally changing, and the dehesa is now receiving the protection it deserves.
From little acorns...
The famous Spanish nutritionist Dr Grande Covián once said that ‘over the course of history, the pig has saved more lives in Spain than penicillin’. Pork was an important source of protein that weathered even 700 years of Muslim influence; today, Iberian ham is truly coming of age as a gastronomic institution. As a national delicacy, the production of jamon de bellota (literally ‘ham from acorns’) is time-consuming and expensive. At least a hectare of healthy dehesa is needed to raise a single pig, and since the trees may be several hundred years old, the prospects for reforesting lost oak forest are slim at best.
True dehesa is a richly diverse habitat with four different types of oak that are crucial in the production of prime-quality ham. The bulk of the acorn harvest comes from the holm oak (from November to February), but the season would be too short without the earlier harvests of Spanish and gall oak and the late cork oak season, which, between them, stretch the acorn-chomping period from September almost to April.
This season is ‘pig heaven’ and, after acquiring a taste for the first nuts, the animals search out the sweet acorns with an almost single-minded addiction. A healthy pig will eat up to ten kilograms of acorns a day (along with three kilograms of grass and herbs). The acorn season is known as the montanera, and ham connoisseurs talk about ‘the montanera of 2005’ in similar terms to those in which wine connoisseurs discuss the vintage of ’97.
For a pig to be certified as ‘bellota’ or ‘Ibérico’ (first-grade) ham, the animal must increase its body weight by nearly half during this period on a diet almost exclusively of acorns. The quality of a ham is in direct relation to the percentage of acorns in the pig’s diet during the montanera.
‘There is no way to mass-produce Iberian ham under intensive farming conditions,’ Jose Luis Pinto explains. ‘The process demands a long and thoroughly natural acorn harvest and totally free-range animals. Sure, you could force-feed a pig with acorns, but the fat that is built up must be distributed throughout the meat by constant exercise. It’s crucial that the pigs roam widely, searching for the acorns.’
Iberian ham is a growing Spanish export and, with a single leg selling for anything up to £400, conservationists are also happy to see that there is increasing interest in investing in the country’s remaining dehesa.
Ham history
Most of Spain’s classic dehesa is in the west of the country, but Jose Luis has been raising pigs on his father’s bullfighting ranch in the hills north of Madrid for many years, and he was recently responsible for getting the Madrid Sierras recognised as prime dehesa. Without this regional recognition, his pigs could never be certified as ‘bellota’, and the best they could aspire to would be ‘second class’ serrano ham.
Walking across the wilderness of the Pinto ranch, it’s easy to feel that you’re closer to the African savannah than anywhere in Europe. The feeling is frequently heightened by the startling appearance of a fighting bull peering alertly at you through the trees – you treat this as ‘rhino country’ and keep a constant weather-eye open for any stout oaks that might present an escape route.
Countless storks ride the thermals in company with vultures, and European finches build their nests alongside African hoopoes and bee-eaters. Deer graze beside bulls and wild boar trample mud hollows and snuffle for acorns alongside the pigs.
The vegetation is varied and essentially wild, yet permanent vigilance is needed to prevent weeds such as the all-pervading jara (rock rose) from strangling the undergrowth. But when they aren’t in the grip of acorn addiction, the pigs are omnivorous, and they perform a valuable service by eating weeds, insects, pests and detritus. For centuries, the pigs and the dehesa have survived in a state of symbiosis, and ecologists have recently demonstrated that oak forests with a healthy population of pigs are far less susceptible to disease.
By the time the acorn season comes to an end, Jose Luis’ pigs will be about 16 months old. Along with farmers from all over Spain, he then sends them to Guijuelo, near Salamanca, for slaughtering and curing. A relatively small town of about 10,000, Guijuelo is home to no less than 75 curing plants and about a million pigs are trucked to its seven slaughterhouses each year.
Jesus Maria de la Gandara is the technical director of Guijuelo’s Consejo Regulador Denominación de Origen, the authority that regulates the quality of each individual ham. ‘The Spanish have two great inventions to bring to Europe: the siesta and tapas,’ he says with a smile. ‘If we can teach the other countries to appreciate these traditions, we will have fulfilled our duty to the continent. And the tapas, of course, should be based on bellota ham!’
This is a part of Spain in which the ham tradition and history are very much alive. Strangely, there are no pig farms and little dehesa in the Guijuelo region, yet the town has been the fulcrum of the Spanish ham industry for hundreds of years. It came of age during Roman times as a way station where mule and oxen trains paused en route from deepest Andalucia with the pigs that were so prized as a protein source in the colder, northern provinces. Red peppers, too, arrived here from the Cuenca region, and it was in Guijuelo that the two regional products were mixed to preserve the ham in the form of spicy chorizo and salchicha. The low humidity and relatively high altitude (just over 1,000 metres) were perfect, too, for the production of cured hams.
A traditional refrain has it that the only part of a pig that can’t be eaten is the ‘oink’. And while every part of the animal is used, Guijuelo remains famous today for its bellota hams. Jesus’ staff test every ham that passes through the curing plants, and each is tagged with a unique serial number that will accompany it until it eventually arrives to be strung from the ceiling of some chic restaurant in Madrid or Barcelona, or in one even farther afield; Guijuelo producers are already shipping bellota ham to Japan, China, Korea and Brazil.
A decade ago, there were only 9,000 Iberian breeding sows in Spain. Today, there are almost 14,000, and ecologists believe that the future of Spain’s remaining 30,000 square kilometres of ancient oak forests is also assured as the market for the world’s finest pork product grows.
A natural cure
The preparation of the national delicacy of jamón de bellota requires time and patience. First, the ham is salted for about a week (or one day per kilo). After this, the salt is washed off and the ham is settled in chilled storage for what is called ‘the sitting period’, which lasts between 30 and 45 days. At first, the temperature is 5°C, but as the salt permeates the leg, the temperate is slowly raised to 10°C. At the end of this period, the salt will be distributed equally throughout the meat and the ham is ready for its six- to ten-month ‘drying period’.
Strangely, there is still no automated way to do this, and in time-honoured fashion, the hams are cured in the highest rooms in curing towers, so that fly-screened windows can be opened to catch the same highland breezes that have been curing hams to perfection here for centuries. Finally, the ham is moved to the bodega (an underground cavern), where it’s left for at least two more years to concentrate the aroma and flavour. The hams are tested at each stage, and only about one in ten hams are finally certified as prime bellota.
The unique texture and fineness of bellota ham is brought about by the fact that acorn fat (distributed throughout the meat by constant exercise) melts at a far lower temperature than the fat that is in other pork. Ideally, the ham should be sliced so thinly that it’s almost transparent, and is served at (Spanish) room temperature so that the oil beads on the meat. This quintessential country delicacy is typically served with nothing more than a glass of good red wine and a hunk of fresh bread.
As Jesus Maria de la Gandara says: ‘Something that takes three years to perfect does not need further enhancement.’
December 2007
Until recently, much of western Spain (and a good part of inland Portugal) was covered by the sparse oak forests that are known as dehesa. This landscape has been a cornerstone of rural life here for centuries. Semi-wild pigs snuffled for acorns, and (wilder still) fighting bulls grazed in the shade. The hardy country folk also foraged here, collecting deadwood for fires, herbs and nuts for sustenance, and oak wood and cork for their huts.
In 63 BC, a Greek geographer wrote that a squirrel could climb a tree beside a beach in southern Spain and, jumping from branch to branch, could travel all the way to the north coast without touching the ground. Many of the extensive forests of western Spain have long since been supplanted by goat-poisoned semi-desert and savannah that is periodically incinerated in rampaging bushfires.
For most of the year, the landscape shimmers under a fireball that is more African than European and the grass is burnt the colour of a lion’s hide. There are brief periods when much-needed rain sends up a sudden rush of lush, green shoots. Then comes the short but unforgiving winter, when bitter winds tear across the open steppes. With seasonal temperatures varying between –10°C and 50°C, it can often seem that the Extremaduran wilderness is totally hostile to both animal and human life.
The cost of deforestation has been immense, with a huge number of Spanish species losing their habitat. The dehesa was once prime territory for healthy populations of lynxes, wolves, wild boar, foxes, deer and even bears, along with countless native and transient bird species. Now experts claim that the future of the remaining forests can only be assured with the help of the humble Iberian pig. The tide is finally changing, and the dehesa is now receiving the protection it deserves.
From little acorns...
The famous Spanish nutritionist Dr Grande Covián once said that ‘over the course of history, the pig has saved more lives in Spain than penicillin’. Pork was an important source of protein that weathered even 700 years of Muslim influence; today, Iberian ham is truly coming of age as a gastronomic institution. As a national delicacy, the production of jamon de bellota (literally ‘ham from acorns’) is time-consuming and expensive. At least a hectare of healthy dehesa is needed to raise a single pig, and since the trees may be several hundred years old, the prospects for reforesting lost oak forest are slim at best.
True dehesa is a richly diverse habitat with four different types of oak that are crucial in the production of prime-quality ham. The bulk of the acorn harvest comes from the holm oak (from November to February), but the season would be too short without the earlier harvests of Spanish and gall oak and the late cork oak season, which, between them, stretch the acorn-chomping period from September almost to April.
This season is ‘pig heaven’ and, after acquiring a taste for the first nuts, the animals search out the sweet acorns with an almost single-minded addiction. A healthy pig will eat up to ten kilograms of acorns a day (along with three kilograms of grass and herbs). The acorn season is known as the montanera, and ham connoisseurs talk about ‘the montanera of 2005’ in similar terms to those in which wine connoisseurs discuss the vintage of ’97.
For a pig to be certified as ‘bellota’ or ‘Ibérico’ (first-grade) ham, the animal must increase its body weight by nearly half during this period on a diet almost exclusively of acorns. The quality of a ham is in direct relation to the percentage of acorns in the pig’s diet during the montanera.
‘There is no way to mass-produce Iberian ham under intensive farming conditions,’ Jose Luis Pinto explains. ‘The process demands a long and thoroughly natural acorn harvest and totally free-range animals. Sure, you could force-feed a pig with acorns, but the fat that is built up must be distributed throughout the meat by constant exercise. It’s crucial that the pigs roam widely, searching for the acorns.’
Iberian ham is a growing Spanish export and, with a single leg selling for anything up to £400, conservationists are also happy to see that there is increasing interest in investing in the country’s remaining dehesa.
Start the slideshow (7 pictures)
Ham history
Most of Spain’s classic dehesa is in the west of the country, but Jose Luis has been raising pigs on his father’s bullfighting ranch in the hills north of Madrid for many years, and he was recently responsible for getting the Madrid Sierras recognised as prime dehesa. Without this regional recognition, his pigs could never be certified as ‘bellota’, and the best they could aspire to would be ‘second class’ serrano ham.
Walking across the wilderness of the Pinto ranch, it’s easy to feel that you’re closer to the African savannah than anywhere in Europe. The feeling is frequently heightened by the startling appearance of a fighting bull peering alertly at you through the trees – you treat this as ‘rhino country’ and keep a constant weather-eye open for any stout oaks that might present an escape route.
Countless storks ride the thermals in company with vultures, and European finches build their nests alongside African hoopoes and bee-eaters. Deer graze beside bulls and wild boar trample mud hollows and snuffle for acorns alongside the pigs.
The vegetation is varied and essentially wild, yet permanent vigilance is needed to prevent weeds such as the all-pervading jara (rock rose) from strangling the undergrowth. But when they aren’t in the grip of acorn addiction, the pigs are omnivorous, and they perform a valuable service by eating weeds, insects, pests and detritus. For centuries, the pigs and the dehesa have survived in a state of symbiosis, and ecologists have recently demonstrated that oak forests with a healthy population of pigs are far less susceptible to disease.
By the time the acorn season comes to an end, Jose Luis’ pigs will be about 16 months old. Along with farmers from all over Spain, he then sends them to Guijuelo, near Salamanca, for slaughtering and curing. A relatively small town of about 10,000, Guijuelo is home to no less than 75 curing plants and about a million pigs are trucked to its seven slaughterhouses each year.
Jesus Maria de la Gandara is the technical director of Guijuelo’s Consejo Regulador Denominación de Origen, the authority that regulates the quality of each individual ham. ‘The Spanish have two great inventions to bring to Europe: the siesta and tapas,’ he says with a smile. ‘If we can teach the other countries to appreciate these traditions, we will have fulfilled our duty to the continent. And the tapas, of course, should be based on bellota ham!’
This is a part of Spain in which the ham tradition and history are very much alive. Strangely, there are no pig farms and little dehesa in the Guijuelo region, yet the town has been the fulcrum of the Spanish ham industry for hundreds of years. It came of age during Roman times as a way station where mule and oxen trains paused en route from deepest Andalucia with the pigs that were so prized as a protein source in the colder, northern provinces. Red peppers, too, arrived here from the Cuenca region, and it was in Guijuelo that the two regional products were mixed to preserve the ham in the form of spicy chorizo and salchicha. The low humidity and relatively high altitude (just over 1,000 metres) were perfect, too, for the production of cured hams.
A traditional refrain has it that the only part of a pig that can’t be eaten is the ‘oink’. And while every part of the animal is used, Guijuelo remains famous today for its bellota hams. Jesus’ staff test every ham that passes through the curing plants, and each is tagged with a unique serial number that will accompany it until it eventually arrives to be strung from the ceiling of some chic restaurant in Madrid or Barcelona, or in one even farther afield; Guijuelo producers are already shipping bellota ham to Japan, China, Korea and Brazil.
A decade ago, there were only 9,000 Iberian breeding sows in Spain. Today, there are almost 14,000, and ecologists believe that the future of Spain’s remaining 30,000 square kilometres of ancient oak forests is also assured as the market for the world’s finest pork product grows.
A natural cure
The preparation of the national delicacy of jamón de bellota requires time and patience. First, the ham is salted for about a week (or one day per kilo). After this, the salt is washed off and the ham is settled in chilled storage for what is called ‘the sitting period’, which lasts between 30 and 45 days. At first, the temperature is 5°C, but as the salt permeates the leg, the temperate is slowly raised to 10°C. At the end of this period, the salt will be distributed equally throughout the meat and the ham is ready for its six- to ten-month ‘drying period’.
Strangely, there is still no automated way to do this, and in time-honoured fashion, the hams are cured in the highest rooms in curing towers, so that fly-screened windows can be opened to catch the same highland breezes that have been curing hams to perfection here for centuries. Finally, the ham is moved to the bodega (an underground cavern), where it’s left for at least two more years to concentrate the aroma and flavour. The hams are tested at each stage, and only about one in ten hams are finally certified as prime bellota.
The unique texture and fineness of bellota ham is brought about by the fact that acorn fat (distributed throughout the meat by constant exercise) melts at a far lower temperature than the fat that is in other pork. Ideally, the ham should be sliced so thinly that it’s almost transparent, and is served at (Spanish) room temperature so that the oil beads on the meat. This quintessential country delicacy is typically served with nothing more than a glass of good red wine and a hunk of fresh bread.
As Jesus Maria de la Gandara says: ‘Something that takes three years to perfect does not need further enhancement.’
December 2007
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