Organic Gascon black pig
Jean and Sibylle Desmarest raise free-range Gascon black pigs at Issac, in the Dordogne, under organic certification rules. The meat is made into cured meats and potted preparations, without nitrites or preservatives. They sell at the farm, deliver to Bordeaux once a week, and travel to private and professional events.
In pictures
Further information
Contact
Jean and Sibylle Desmarest
Telephone
06 83 38 51 71
The producer and the place
Jean and Sibylle Desmarest set up their farm in 2020 at La Massinie, a fortified manor house in the commune of Issac, in the Dordogne, after six years spent in Normandy. They keep some eighty Gascon black pigs, a hardy south-western breed that came close to disappearing in the 1980s. The animals range freely between woodland and open ground, with straw-bedded shelters for the night, and are fed once a day on organic grain from the Dordogne, brewing malt from la Nové, an organic brewery in Bergerac, and bran flour. The rest of the time they root through the coppice, and in years when the oaks and chestnuts crop they finish on acorns and chestnuts. Fattening takes twelve months at the least.
What they produce
From the birth of the piglet to the finished jar, the farm works to organic certification rules. Cutting and curing take place in the Dordogne, at a certified workshop, without nitrites or preservatives, while the hams go to the Basque Country to air-dry for at least twelve months. Alongside the cured meats, saucisson, chorizo, coppa, ventrèche, loin and ham, there are terrines, an enchaud and lard, and five-kilo boxes of fresh meat, sold on advance order.
At the château
Jean and Sibylle Desmarest travel to private and professional events, and list three ways of doing so: carving a whole ham by hand on its stand, charcuterie boards served as tapas and pintxos, and gift hampers. They can therefore come to the château, at your own direct request, with their own quotation and their own invoice. At Issac, the farm shop opens by appointment, and a tour of the farm and the truffle orchard, followed by a tasting, can be booked all year round for groups of ten or more, and at set times during the Easter and summer holidays.
Seasonal rental
Rent the Château de Montastruc for your event
Ten bedrooms, a 20-hectare park and a swimming pool, for twenty people, a week or more. Send your dates and you will receive the availability and the rate for that period.
