Many regions across France and the rest of Europe are proud of their wild boar stews, but nowhere more so than Corsica, where civet de sanglier, or stufatu di cignale in Corsican, is practically a national treasure.
There are other popular meat stews—most notably veau aux olives—and other must-try foods and dishes, such as agneau Corse (slow-roast lamb with garlic, rosemary and potatoes), roast kid (cabri), aziminu (Corsica’s answer to bouillabaisse), and a roster of exceptional charcuterie products and sheep and goat’s cheeses, but civet de sanglier exemplifies the enduring, earthy, wholesome cooking born of what the mountainous interior yielded rather than what the island’s surrounding waters could provide. And it’s a style born of both French and Italian influences, too, thanks to Corsica’s history.
The islanders do catch and eat fish and seafood—witness aziminu and traditional dishes such as truite farcie Brocciu (river trout stuffed with a soft, fresh whey and milk AOP cheese) and rascasse aux four (baked scorpion fish)—but the cuisine is more meat-based than fish-oriented for the simple reason that most of the population lived on the land in the interior until malaria was eradicated from the coastal areas after World War II. In the mountains, maquis and high-altitude pastures, people hunted wild boar and pigs, raised sheep and goats (for meat, milk and cheese), gathered honey, grew olives for oil and eating and vines for wine and, like the wild hogs, depended on chestnuts as another vital source of sustenance.
The chestnut has had a particular place in Corsican cuisine and culture since the Middle Ages. It is one of the ingredients that distinguishes the civet de sanglier Corse from the wild boar stews of most other regions (that said, you occasionally find Corsican recipes without chestnuts and other areas with) and it’s one of the things, along with the aromatic maquis herbs, that the boar also feed on and which gives their flesh its prized flavour.
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Chestnuts, Nielluccio, and civet de sanglier
Throughout the Middle Ages the island was under Italian rule: Pisan, from 1077 to 1284, which introduced Tuscan culinary ideas, including pasta (cannelloni au Brocciu is a classic Corsican dish), followed by Genoese rule, lasting until the island was ceded to the French in 1768. By then, Nielluccio (Tuscany’s Sangiovese)—now the island’s most widely planted and well respected red grape variety—was well established.
In his 1769 An Account of Corsica, The Journal of a Tour to that Island, James Boswell (Scottish biographer and diarist best known for his biography of Dr Johnson), makes no mention of grape varieties, and one wouldn’t expect him to, but he wrote percipiently and illuminatingly about the wines: “Over the whole island there are wines of different sorts. It is indeed wonderful, what a difference what a little variation of soil or exposure, even in the same vineyard, will make in the taste of a wine. There are wines “very like Burgundy,” he says, and “rich sweet wine much resembling Tokay.”.
Back to chestnuts: it was a Genoese governor in 1548 who first decreed that every landowner must plant a chestnut, a mulberry, an olive and a fig tree each year. A subsequent governor upped the chestnut ante in 1619 by decreeing that every landowner must plant 10 chestnut trees a year. In the coming years, chestnuts replaced cereals as the staple crop, changing the diet of both people and hogs, as well as the face of the landscape.
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Stufatu di cignale is widely recognised as a very old recipe (as is veau aux olives). There is little documentation to support this, but we shouldn’t necessarily expect any. People living off the land passed recipes down through the generations orally. They didn’t pen them for posterity.
For the same reason, and as so often, there is no definitive recipe. But the usual essentials are chunks of wild boar marinated in red wine, herbs and other flavourings, slowly cooked the next day in the strained marinade with onion and garlic in generous quantities, carrots. fennel, chestnuts, myrtle and/or other herbs such as rosemary and bay leaves, and often some eau de vie and more wine. Some contemporary recipes also include tomato purée. The result is a dark, richly flavoured, hearty stew, usually served with pasta or polenta, which demands a red wine with depth and power to match.
The best wines to pair with civet de sanglier
It would be no hardship to stick with Corsica’s own Nielluccio-based offerings—wines such as AOP Patrimonio (which has to be at least 90% Nielluccio), or, to be more specific, Clos Culombu Corse Calvi Rouge or Domaine Torraccia Cuvée Oriu Corse Porto Vecchio.
There are, though, many alternatives, including from Tuscany, which has its own wild boar stew, spezzatino di cinghiale. I generally favour the power of Brunello di Montalcino over Chianti with civet de sanglier (Poggio di Sotto, to name one of the greats tasted), although, if the stew is a little lighter, with a greater emphasis on fennel and chestnut, a good Rosso di Montalcino can come into its own (again, it could be Poggio di Sotto).
Bolgheri and Maremma Toscana Bordeaux blends (sometimes including Sangiovese) also pair well. I would be very happy with Podere Grattamacco Bolgheri Superiore, or even the estate’s straight Bolgheri Rosso. Another Italian region to consider is Montefalco, either a Sangiovese-based Montefalco Rosso (in which the tannic Sagrantino authorised only up to 25 percent), or a mature 100% Sagrantino DOCG wine in which the tannins have mellowed.
Back in France, I would look to old-vine Grenache-based Languedoc-Roussillon reds, for example, Domaine Jones Vieilles Vignes Fitou, southern Rhônes from appellations including Cairanne and Gigondas, and Provence reds such as Domaine Richeaume’s plush, layered Syrah 2019. Across the Atlantic, the beautifully expressive, equally plush Syrah-based L’Ecole No. 41 from Columbia Valley works in a similar way. In Spain, I would consider Ribera del Duero; in Australia, old-vine Barossa Shiraz; in Georgia, Saperavi. And that’s just for starters.
