In the tiny village of Zambujal, set back from the coast in the heart of the Algarve’s rural east, pigs outnumber people 10 to one. This is hardly a challenge – the human population is only 15. We’re miles – and a world – away from crowded Albufeira; until recently, a tourist in this location would have caused more comment than if one of those 150 pigs had launched itself into the clear blue sky and flown. Now, things are beginning to change. Word has spread, and visitors are making the drive into these rural foothills to feast on the finest pork products in the region.
Nine years ago, Rui Jeronimo gave up his banking job in Faro and started to farm pigs on 18 hectares of land inherited from his grandfather. It’s hilly, dry, and at times almost barren-looking, with terracotta-tinged soil dusted over hard, granite bedrock. But the hardy Alentejano black pigs – you can tell them by their slender ankles, slim enough to fit in the circle of your finger and thumb – thrive here, feasting not only on their allocated kilo of corn or barley each day, but on what they forage from the land: roots, figs and acorns.
They are truly free-range, as I learn on a wander around the fields. Paulo Marques – who brought his 30 years of experience as a butcher to the job – walks towards the gate, clapping his hands loudly and sending a guttural cry of “Oi! Oi! Oi!” across the valley. So scattered are they, it takes several minutes for a stream of pigs to arrive.
Mouthwatering slices of presunto, the famed dry-cured pig thigh
(Joanna Booth)
After more than 18 months of this independent existence, it’s “tchau, porcos” (bye, pigs) – Paulo learned after his first year on the farm not to give the pigs names – and the curing process begins. “We use only natural products, like our grandmothers did,” Rui explains, standing in just one of the many rooms at Feito no Zambujal that are packed from floor to rafter with bits of pig. All sorts of cuts are salted, hung and smoked, but the undisputed king is the presunto, the dry-cured thigh. Paulo lets me have a go at slicing my own, but I soon hand him back the knife and concentrate on stuffing as many sweet, marbled, melting slivers into my mouth as I can.
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