Introducing Pig & Vine

I know.

More pig.

And I’m writing this on a Friday night, and the ghost of my grandfather is probably ready to strike me down.

But this is the problem that I have with all things porcine: it doesn’t matter what day of the week it is. If there is pork involved, I’ll write about it, talk about it, cook it, eat it. I’ve dragged cinghiale sausage back from Tuscany  in my suitcase, and lost a dozen pair of socks to the relentless cloud of earth and dust and dung that defines Tuscan pork terroir; I sipped glass after glass of vino nobile on the terrace of an off-the-beaten-path villa in Rapolano Terme, and listened to the emphatic grunts of the wild beasts engaged in their mating rituals, just a few feet from where I sat. I’ve eaten Spam on Saturday mornings at my childhood breakfast table, country ham on white at a gingham table-clothed restaurant outside Harrisonburg Virginia, deviled ham on rye while sitting on a bus on my way up to my kosher sleepaway camp when I was 9. I’ve climbed fences and dodged pissed off turkeys who wanted to do to me what was done to Suzanne Pleshette in The Birds, in order to introduce myself to two pig sisters at a farm in New York. Susan rubbed their bellies, and all I could think of was culatello.

It’s terrible, but it’s true.

Susan and The Pig

I adore pig in all its smarter-than-a-dog, cute-as-all-get-out lovlieness. I respect the beast profoundly, and remember the time when my colleague, Fred Thompson (the food guy, not the politician) said that his people had raised pigs from as far back as he could remember, and that there was never, ever, ever any reason for any pig to suffer for the fate of being turned into sausage.  This made me feel marginally better, because my love of pig product sometimes causes me great guilt. Until someone hands me a slice of Prosciutto di Parma, and then I just quietly give thanks.

I have a profoundly odd relationship with pig, and I can’t seem to help myself. And the mystical thing about pig is this: I’m not alone. You know who you are, and if you love it as much as I do, then Pig & Vine is for you.

Born out of a life-changingly stellar, midnight meal consisting of nothing more than Jamon Serrano and glasses of an indefinable Portuguese red, every month Pig & Vine will bring to the table a fully researched examination of the marriage of cured pork—Italian, Spanish, French, German, Polish, Portuguese—red wine, and story.

Until then, Fervet olla, vivit amicitia.