A Hungarian geneticist revived the Mangalitsa breed.

Mangalitsa, a huge woolly pig from Hungary only recently back from near-extinction, is beginning to enjoy a vogue with purveyors and connoisseurs of pork.

The chef Paul Liebrandt has been offering a fragrant Mangalitsa strip loin at the refined Corton in Manhattan. “The flavor is intense, well rounded, balanced,” Mr. Liebrandt said. “It is wonderfully smoky.”

Mangalitsa, with its unctuous, intense flavor, is also becoming available to ordinary pig worshipers . D’Artagnan, the foie-gras purveyor, sells Mangalitsa ham cured in Spain at Grace’s Marketplace in Manhattan and other high-end outlets. DeBragga and Spitler, the specialty meat distributor in Manhattan, sells fresh retail cuts of Mangalitsa pork, as well as lard and hams, nationally on its Web site.

To produce their fabulous fat, Mangalitsas are raised for more than a year and can weigh more than 136 kilograms . Industrially bred pigs are slaughtered after no more than six months, at around 80 kilograms. In the United States, only some 50 Mangalitsas are processed each week - in comparison with more than 2 million pigs a week for all breeds, according to the National Pork Producers Council.

And Mangalitsas’ rolls of fat make them unsuitable for butchery in the American fashion, with a band saw producing a cross-section of pork cuts. Mangalitsas benefit from more laborintensive (read expensive) European butchery, where a carcass is broken down by its seams of muscle.

So Mangalitsa is pricey. In the New York area, a restaurant’s cost for a kilogram of boneless loin might be about $6 for the cheapest industrial hybrids, $15 to nearly $18 for Berkshire pigs, and $22 to $26 for Mangalitsa.

A growing number of small-scale hog farmers around the United States have found Mangalitsas easy to raise. “Mangalitsas are very hardy, with their woolly coats,” said Michael Clampffer, who has 120 of them at his Mosefund Farm in Branchville, New Jersey, selling their pork to restaurants and offering chops, sausage, bacon and lard on Sundays at the New Amsterdam Market in Manhattan.

Dr. Erno Hollo, 52, of the Basking Ridge Animal Hospital in New Jersey, has raised Mangalitsas on two hectares at his home and says they have few veterinary needs. Dr. Hollo, who emigrated from Hungary 26 years ago, grew up with hogs.

“I used to tend to farmers’ animals, and I took payment in Mangalitsa belly,” he said. “In Hungary, Boy Scouts didn’t make S’mores. They would take a slab of Mangalitsa, put the fat over the fire and drink the sweet fat as it melted.”

Mangalitsas, which have charcoal black coats, tan underbellies and twisty woolly tails, were historically raised for lard and prized for their mellow, silky fat. The former New York Times restaurant critic Ruth Reichl called it “the single best pastry fat I’ve ever found.” Their popularity declined with the substitution of cheaper vegetable oils for lard. Purebred Mangalitsas nearly vanished until a Hungarian geneticist worked to revive the breed several years ago.

Heath Putnam, in Auburn, Washington, was the first farmer to import Mangalitsa breeding stock and now has the largest herd outside of Europe, some 2,000. Of the 29 pigs he brought over, 4 were killed because tests showed they might have had bovine tuberculosis.

Mr. Putnam has spent $600,000 so far on his Mangalitsas. “For the last several months we’ve made a profit,” he said .

Johnston County Hams in Smithfield, North Carolina, has been curing Mangalitsa hams and shoulders for the last year.

Fans of the ham claim that it rivals the renowned Iberico of Spain and is superior to the more commonplace jamon serrano. But Jose Andres, the Spanish chef who owns seven restaurants in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, disagreed.

“Mangalitsa is a good product,” he said. “It’s O.K., it might equal a serrano, but definitely never an Iberico.”

George Faison, a partner and the chief operating officer of DeBragga, which sells the Mangalitsa ham and fresh pork, has been campaigning for the breed. “We hope it can come to occupy a small, but significant and profitable niche,” he said.

He helped organize a recent $85-aperson Mangalitsa tasting dinner. On the menu were jowls with American caviar, braised cheeks with pimento, endive and praline, and roasted neck roll with stuffed lady apple and organic rice polenta.

This sort of promotion has helped DeBragga become America’s largest Mangalitsa distributor.

“But that is to say, the biggest fish in a minuscule pond,” Mr. Faison said.


By GLENN COLLINS