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Ice-swine: Popping the cork for pork
Winery chef serves pigs that were fed icewine for 40 days
Posted By MONIQUE BEECH
As a premier chef at one of Niagara’s top wineries, Frank Dodd routinely braises pork in fine wine.
Recently, two pigs arrived at Niagara-on-the-Lake’s Hillebrand restaurant already soused.
For more than 40 days, the pair of Berkshire pigs reared at an Ingersoll-area farm were fed a barley soybean mixture doused in 200 mililitres of icewine per day.
Starting in December, farmer Kevin Rivers religiously poured his young pampered pigs a serving of a 2006 Trius Vidal icewine, which sells for $49.95 per 375 mL bottle.
Not a cheap food source.
Hillebrand donated two cases (12 bottles per case) of the sweet dessert wine, made from naturally frozen grapes, in the spirit of an experiment.
The idea came to Rivers’ wife, Allyson MacDonald, a wine aficionado and veterinarian who read about Australian beef cattle producers who fed red wine to their stock to satisfy the whim of the “white table cloth” Japanese market.
The couple decided to pitch the plan to Dodd, who saw it as a chance to jazz up his restaurant’s luxurious icewine dinner, which was held Saturday.
Rare Berkshire pigs, which originated in Britain, have a reputation for taking longer to fatten, but produce juicy, flavourful meat.
The 85 primarily black heritage porkers already get top treatment at Rivers’ pig farm, where, unlike regular swine in his barn, they have hay nests and room to roam.
Regular pigs sell for about 50 cents a pound. Berkshire’s retail for about $2 – without the icewine treatment.
“The Berkshires are a premium product to begin with, but it certainly took it to a whole new level when you consider the retail price of the wines that went into them,” said Rivers, who is part of a Berkshire pig co-operative with six other Ontario producers called Black Bow Farms.
Dodd, who has been a chef for 18 years, said he has heard of cattle being fed beer, but never pigs tippling icewine.
The “ice swine,” which weigh upwards of 200 pounds, were not force fed the sought-after golden nectar, reassured Dodd.
“You can’t get a 300-pound pig to do anything it doesn’t want to do,” Dodd said.
Luckily, pigs have a natural sweet tooth and penchant for fruit, such as apples and pears.
Tropical fruit, hints of honey, apricot and apple are common flavours used by wine writers to describe Vidal icewine.
“They were looking for me coming with it every morning, that’s for sure,” said Rivers, who added the hogs don’t get drunk.
“This is not knocking the wine, but if I’d come with orange juice every morning it would be the same thing. Anything sweet and juicy they’re going to like.”
The silver spoon-fed swine pleased the palates of the 82 diners gathered at Hillebrand on Saturday.
Sausages and ribs stuffed with savoury apricots and raisins and saturated with freshly pressed icewine grape juice left them feeling high on the hog.
Dodd said he’d like to have another go at wine-fed pigs. This time, he’d like the porkers to lap up Trius Red, a mix of the winery’s best Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc grapes.
Winemaker Darryl Brooker said he’s OK with his hard work going to the hogs and is accustomed to Dodd using his wines in the restaurant’s food.
“We’re always giving him wine from our cellars to use, icewine especially,” Brooker said.
“In this instance, he used it before the cooking as opposed to during the cooking,” Brooker said with a laugh.
Article ID# 881453
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