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Chianti Needs Cajuns

How to solve the wild boar and deer problem in Italy
Cinghiale girls in Norcia, in winter fashion (Photo by Rod Dreher)
Cinghiale girls in Norcia, in winter fashion (Photo by Rod Dreher)

Oh dear:

Fences are rising. There is talk of a brutal and destructive insurgency, invasions and a slaughter that could include hundreds of thousands in the years ahead.

If that sounds something like a war, the battlefield is the prized vineyards of Chianti, Italy’s vaunted wine region in the heart of the rolling hills of Tuscany.

And the enemy? An exploding population of voracious

Cinghiale sausage for sale!
Cinghiale sausage for sale!

wild boars and deer that savor the sugary grapes and the vines’ tender sprouts, but that are also part of the region’s famed landscape, hunting traditions and cuisine.

Long allowed to thrive as part of that heritage, the wild ungulates, the group to which these species belong, are now four times as numerous in Tuscany as they are in other Italian regions. In Europe, only parts of Austria have more.

Wine growers and farmers here say that population now threatens a delicate Tuscan ecosystem, in addition to provoking hundreds of car accidents a year and damaging the production of their treasured Chianti Classico.

Read the whole thing.

Isn’t the answer obvious? Chianti needs Cajuns. You can get absolutely delicious wild boar (cinghiale) sausage in Tuscany and Umbria, but there aren’t enough Italians to eat it, I guess. This is where we come in. Cajuns will cook and eat anything, and make it delicious. Anybody up for a cinghiale sauce piquante?

Area nitwit and his boar
Area nitwit and his boar
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