Joey Ingram is head chef at Margan and seized the chance to move from the city with his family just over a year ago. He comes to the Hunter via two of Sydney’s great restaurants, Tetsuya’s and Balzac. Joey says that Fergus Henderson’s Nose to Tail Eating was what led him to Matt Kemp at Balzac and fostered his love of whole beast cooking.
 
“Matt was buying whole carcases in the city way before anyone else; it was part of his English kitchen tradition.” Ingram says there was no ‘ethos’ and laughs as he imagines what Kemp actually said about such ephemeral things. “It was more about showing the skill of the chef on one plate. Using the whole thing was just good kitchen management.”
 
The traditional butchery skills learned under Kemp allowed him to develop his agri-dining style. In practice, this concept means around 90 percent of what Ingram serves over his kitchen pass comes from the estate. His main-focus is the one-hectare organic garden that dictates his five course set menu.
 
 
 

“I think that the guests can see the connection, they get to do a tour of the garden, they get to meet the lamb, see the chickens and to see the vegetables that they’re about to eat. All of that ties into what we try to do here, which is estate grown, estate made.”

Managing Director of Hanna Pastoral Sam Hanna, is passionate about the process and takes great pride in what the family are achieving.
 
 
 

“We do everything onsite, from genetics and breeding to backgrounding and finishing at our own boutique feedlot operation. We’re constantly looking to improve genetics, employing the best animal and pasture management practices and utilising the benefit of an onsite finishing program where we can control what we feed the animals for the end product,” Sam said.

 
 
 
Laconic Nick Brien and his wife Leonie are quintessential cattle people, big hats and bigger hearts – happier on the back of a horse than off one. They manage Colly Creek, alongside long-term stockmen Roger Barnett and Les Palmer. While typically modest, you sense their pride, deep understanding of the land and their love of the cattle industry.
 
“Here, the animals come first. We are very much about low stress stock handling which means calmer animals, more productivity and more comfortable surrounds for the cattle so they do better, which means better eating quality beef at the end of the day,” Nick said.
 

With the improved season, Colly Creek expects around 700 calves this season. The calves enjoy the benefit of full pastures until weaning at around 8-10 months; then once they reach target weight, they head to the boutique onsite feedlot for finishing. Here they will go through a ‘backgrounding’ process that slowly introduces grain to their diet and establishes them in low-stress social groups prior to entering the feedlot.
 
Once in the feedlot they transition to a high protein, barley based diet with the cattle’s appetite dictating the ration. In around 120 days they will reach the target 600-650kg at which point they will be sent to the abattoir for processing.
 
“The 120 day grain finish that we put on the cattle is really important to the consistency of the product and to make sure that we get that intramuscular fat and fat cover for the 45 day dry ageing that ultimately benefits the eating quality of the product.”

Burnt Ends at Beerfarm is a collaboration situated in Metricup in the south west of Western Australia. The craft brewery and smokehouse sits on 160 acres where they graze around 70 head of prime Angus cattle.
 
The team at Burnt Ends, executive chef Eileen Booth, pitmaster Nathan Booth and venue manager Emma Locke believe utilising their own livestock is key for creating a premium end-product.
 
 
 

“We are passionate and humble people. Honesty and integrity is at the heart of everything we do and our ethos is encapsulated by our brand tagline ‘established for the future’. We are always striving to be sustainable and accountable for all procedures we have at the farm. Our eye is not on the past but the future,” Booth says.

 
 
 
As working partners with a brewery, this ethos is put into practice. Spent grain and yeasts from the brew process is fed to the cattle and provides extra proteins and nutrients while adding to the flavour of the meat; and acting as a supplement in the dryer months when less grass is available. Diatomaceous Earth, used in the filtering process for beer, is mixed in with the grain and the aids in controlling gut parasites. In addition, the yeast that has been filtered out contains lots of vitamins and minerals that have a positive impact on the cattle’s gut health.”
 
 
 

“Raise The Steaks on Friday nights is where we really flex our muscles and showcase our beef to a more controlled audience in a more intimate dining setting. Here we have an opportunity to use all the major prime cuts and also secondary cuts and this menu changes on a weekly basis.”
 
“Our Smoking Saturday’s menus have been gaining fast acknowledgement for the traditional BBQ and smoking methods we use, no shortcuts. We run a variety of dishes that come directly from the pits including brisket, beef ribs, our own links that change in flavour, tacos with our beef and full barbecue platters consisting of a little bit of everything.”
 
 
 

“We also sell a range of Beerfarm Bangers available to the public that have been packaged up for us by our butcher. Like anything, these processes take time and we are always striving to do and be better. We are working on our own bresaola, pastramis and jerky currently to optimise the use of the secondary cuts. This is something we are very passionate about,” said Booth.

Located amongst the vineyards of Amelia Park Wines in the Wilyabrup sub-region of Margaret River, Blair and Renee Allen have run the award-winning Amelia Park Restaurant since 2017. Allen’s jarrah-fired kitchen relies on local produce including some from the restaurant’s own garden with the core offering being Amelia Park branded lamb and beef.
 
Being part of an integrated boutique brand allows chef Allen the perception and marketing benefits of a paddock to plate ethos without the challenges of utilising the entire carcase.
 
 
 

“At Amelia Park Restaurant we generally showcase a primary and a secondary cut of lamb, generally the rack and the square cut shoulder. With the beef, we use the strip loin that we get in whole bone-in and dry age for four weeks in our dry ageing fridge. The slow roasted lamb shoulder is by far our most popular dish and what we are known for and we sell between 80 and 120 shoulders a week.”

 
 
 
“We have a very diverse customer base at the restaurant and our menu reflects this and is very flexible. Amelia Park lamb and beef has never let me down, it is always fresh and full of flavour and has been the cornerstone of all my menus over a long period of time,” Renee said.

“I used to come out on weekends from high school in Tumut and cook and clean and I used to do all the washing by hand. I’d go back to school and I wouldn’t have any skin left on my hands. Then we got a washing machine with a roller to put the sheets through – you had to keep your fingers out of it. But that was a big help.”

 
 
 
Betty’s father remarried about a year after her mother died. Having managed the place, cooking and cleaning for so many years, Betty decided she wasn’t going to stay and moved into town. Not long after she met and married the local service station man – her daughter Maria’s father.
 
Betty’s father had moved off the property to live in Adelong with his new wife and it wasn’t long before Betty was back to Arden where she belonged.
 
“I was living in Adelong and I hated it. I hated town. I asked my father if I could go back and live on the property and then he handed me the place. It was the fifties or the sixties and I was about 30, with one child.”

Arden paid its way during that time through the high price of Merino wool – again being a woman posed its challenges and again, Betty pushed on.
 
 
 

“I used to have trouble with the shearers and the wool classers because I was female. I only ever sacked one man in my life and he was a shearer. I also went and became a registered wool classer so I could class my own wool – and I’m still a registered wool classer.”

 
 
 
In the mid-eighties, the wool industry crashed and Arden was forced to transition. By this time, with some foresight Betty had started improving Arden’s alpine pastures by the advent of aerial spreading of superphosphate. Native grasses were seasonal and didn’t have the nutritive value of perennial clovers – which provided the farm with greater capacity to run cattle.
 
The purchase of a line of 10 females and a bull was the beginning of Arden Angus and for a short period of time it ran it as a stud selling stud heifers with young bulls sold as a sideline. More recently, Arden has moved towards a larger scale bull operation – purchasing the best genetic bulls they can afford from stud breeders, then making those genetics available to commercial breeders.
 
 
 

Listen to Mark’s audio reading of this story.

Feeding the world creates a tension between agriculture, efficiency and the economy in being environmentally sensitive but without sacrificing economic viability. Can we be economically viable without cost to the environment? It is a tension between the past, present and future and a question for our livelihoods.
 
In recent decades, there has been enormous growth in livestock production, driven by increasing demand for premium brands from a burgeoning middle class in developing nations, which is putting additional pressure on agricultural systems.

Beef production, like any agricultural activity, has an environmental footprint and is a contributor to CO2 emissions. However, the Australian beef industry believes that it can not only improve the operating environment, but also actively reduce emissions to operate in a carbon neutral capacity. In fact, the Australian beef industry has set the ambitious goal of being carbon neutral by 2030.
 
I spoke to several leading Australian beef brands about what sustainability means to them – what does it look like in practice and ultimately, what does it taste like?
 
The Australian beef industry, through its Australian Beef Sustainability Framework, defines sustainability as the production of beef in a manner that is socially, environmentally and economically responsible by caring for natural resources, people and the community, ensuring the health and welfare of animals, and driving continuous improvement.

Many Australian beef producers feel that a regenerative approach to pastoral management and grazing is part of the solution. Regenerative farming is rediscovering the benefits of traditional practices and awakening to land management techniques suited to our environment, not those we inherited from our European forebears.
 
This new generation of farmers have a conscious radical pragmatism that comes from generations on the land. Rather than being evangelical outliers, they recognise that without immediate change, the future is finite. These farmers are using tradition, technology and science to ensure the long-term viability of their families, the industry and their largest financial asset, the land.
 
Three years of drought tested the capacity of agricultural systems and their ability to withstand such a prolonged dry spell. The choice was two horned – maintain stock levels though the purchase of feed and continuing to graze [to the point of degradation] or maintain the natural feed and soil holding capacity by selling stock at record low prices and restocking when things turned around. Both choices hinged on the desperate hope that seasonal rains would return.
 

Founded in 2017, Provenir holds the belief that the best quality meat comes from livestock that are raised to the highest of welfare standards. Their farm gate business model utilises a transportable, fully integrated meat processing plant that not only eliminates unnecessary stress on livestock, it gives them a rare insight into practices across a variety of properties and allows them to make an objective assessment on beef quality.
 
 
 

“What we are doing is not new – we are practicing an ancient tradition of processing at the point of production. In our experience the regenerative farmers we have worked with in southern NSW they are some of the most productive, economically viable farmers, and are also relaxed and happy people finding balance in nature, farming and life,” said founder Jayne Newgreen.

Five Founders, launched in 2019, is a subsidiary of one of Australia’s largest and oldest cattle companies, The North Australian Pastoral Company. NAPCo manages a herd of 200,000 cattle, across six million hectares of land throughout Queensland and the Northern Territory [some 1% of Australia’s land mass].
 
Sales General Manager James Carson says that they have achieved improved productivity through carefully managing soils and grasses using appropriate livestock grazing practices and improvements to their cattle herd through an internal genetics program.
 
In 2019, Five Founders became Australia’s first carbon neutral certified beef brand, through their long-term approach to vegetation and land management, and are on a journey to continue to reduce their carbon footprint through many initiatives including the shift to renewable energy sources and biodiversity across stations and methane reduction through feed additives.
 
 
 

“Regenerative agriculture is more economically viable in some segments of agriculture than others. For a traditional grass finished cattle producer, regenerative agriculture throws up fewer challenges than a traditional grain grower for example. There is no doubt that regenerative agriculture is attracting more interest and as more participants enter this space, viability will become more common place.”

“Moving from traditional to regenerative agriculture requires a change in mindset, practices and inputs. Consumers want to feel good about their purchase decision so by providing a sustainable option to them makes perfect sense. Customers in developed markets have the disposable income to pay for this attribute and it is a growing market,” Carson said.
 
Greenham – the business behind beef brands like Cape Grim and Bass Strait – works with the Australian Beef Sustainability Framework to follow its definition of sustainability in their operations. Their approach involves looking at the whole picture across animal welfare, economic resilience, environmental management and community.

Josh got his first taste for Aussie fine dining working with Shane Osborn – the first Australian chef to be awarded one and two Michelin stars – at his restaurant Pied-a-Terre in London. Josh arrived in Australia to work at Urbane in Brisbane where he was head chef for four years before moving to Tetsuya’s where he now manages a team of 17 who work together to keep the icon evolving.

Rangers Valley Black Onyx Short Rib is brined for eight hours and cooked at 60 degrees for 30 hours, then pressed and portioned. For service, it is charred on the yakitori and finished with fermented pickled shiitake powder. Served with charred shishito pepper, enoki and baby leek.

Day two saw the trio come together at Limone for the first time, familiarising themselves with an entirely different kitchen and set up, a completely new team and an event that was entirely their own. Seamlessly they worked together throughout the day to put on a flawless event that was in such high demand that some guests had travelled five hours to attend.
 
Young Chef of the Year Bianca Johnston from Tom McHugo’s in Hobart saw the collaboration as a unique opportunity to be able to work with two like-minded individuals who live and work in completely different places to her.
 
“I’m really excited to come together and bounce around ideas with people who I normally wouldn’t be working with and to learn about the different produce that is so prolific here. Obviously the lamb is really different to the stuff I work with at home so just coming to a different region and seeing the community here and working with the produce is so exciting.”

Young Waiter of the Year Olivia Evans from the tiny 12 seat Fleet in Brunswick Heads was excited to be ingrained into a new region and to discover regional nuisances outside those she is used to.
 
“I’m excited about being in another regional area because I live and work in a regional area and have become so used to my own network of farmers and producers. So it’s really amazing to see another part of Australia, another climate, another range of products that are being produced by a small and inspiring group of people.”
 
“At the event I will be looking after the wine pairing for the menu that Luke and Bianca have put together, working with some of the beautiful producers in the region and some of the local wines to find the perfect match for each dish.”

For three young hospitality professionals to come together with little more than 24 hours to determine and test a menu utilising the whole lamb carcase, to match local beverages and to prepare, execute and host an entire event without fault – was an impressive thing to see.
 
Through their collaboration, their openness and willingness to learn and listen, their respect for the local and seasonal produce, their calm demeanours and skilled execution through every part of the process – these young superstars showed that the future of our food industry is in incredibly capable hands.

MEMORIES OF MINCE

As the days become shorter and the nights turn three dog cold, I have traded shorts for longs and hunted out the beanie. Having long ago given up even the idea of a summer bod (some would say this is a public service), I am happy to roll into winter clobber. Winter brings changes in the kitchen too with all the carbs and slow cooked dishes bringing the requisite degree of physical and emotional comfort.

 
 
Shopping becomes more perfunctory in winter and I find myself cooking with a certain degree of economy – one pot dishes that improve on a second helping and are even better the next day. I find myself eschewing the new and craving the simple dishes I loved as a kid.
 
Classic spag bol’ – the simplicity of mince, onion, bay leaf, pepper, salt and a tin of soup, served on top of spaghetti with a good shake of Kraft chunder cheese. Shepherd’s pie, basically mince with mash on top, made a bit fancy from the pattern of the fork making those crunchy bits that were the best. Shepherd’s is lamb, cottage is beef (that may also contain peas) – these are the rules, I didn’t make them.
 
I remember those mornings as a country kid when the grass was white with frost and the hose frozen solid, we would have savoury mince for breakfast. Mum would cook enough for days with the last of it usually ending up in the jaffle iron for Sunday night tea.
 
 

Coarse beef mince cooked in dripping with a tablespoon of flour, onion, salt and white pepper – the great Margaret Fulton would allow the addition of “a spoon of tomato paste and chopped parsley” but my father would have considered this an adulteration while enjoying his on hot buttered toast with a liberal dash of Worcestershire.
 
And there lies the comfort of my memories of mince.

 
 
At its most basic, mince is the result of waste reduction and whole carcase utlilisation – taking unused cuts and fat to create an extremely usable source of protein and bring value to the carcase. Yet around the world, mince has played a key role in the development of dishes of culinary renown and cultural significance – dishes that transcend time and place, have a hold in history and are lovingly passed down, reinvented, and given new life.

Paul Farag is the executive chef of newly opened Aalia Restaurant in Sydney’s CBD where he aims to create a unique offering of the Middle East through its diverse peoples and landscape.
 
“Most of us [chefs] think of French cooking as being sort of the pinnacle. Through my research, I found out that the oldest cookbook known to man is a Middle Eastern cookbook from ancient Mesopotamia [modern day Iraq]. It is incredibly interesting in that it is written more as a way of life and focuses on sustainability and the use of the entire animal,” he said.
 
Farag is well placed to break away from the standard Middle Eastern restaurant fare – his family emigrated to Australia from the culinary crossroads of Egypt and through Aalia, he wants to demonstrate the diversity of the Middle East with dishes ranging from Mauritania on the west coast of Africa, all the way into Iran.
 
 
 

“A lot of the Middle East is economically poor so when you go to the markets you will see whole carcases hanging and being butchered in front of you. Like everywhere else in the world, the premium cuts go to those that can afford them and the rest goes to mince. Not everyone can afford the primal cuts so mince is a way that everyone can have meat in their diet,” Farag said.

Farag demonstrates his approach with a dish of goat merguez.
 
“It sort of takes on elements of a North African merguez in terms of its spicing and I have added bone marrow for fat and flavour with plenty of garlic, and heavily spiced with harissa. Cooked cous-cous gives it volume and a lighter texture. This is a variation on my family’s recipe and it changes from Auntie to Auntie, some wrap in caul fat, others whip in extra fat and have their own recipe for the spices.”
 
“I love the fact that we are able to utilise the entire carcase. I can’t imagine any celebratory family meal where we wouldn’t have kofta in some form or another,” Farag said.

O’Tama Carey is chef and owner of the popular Lankan Filling Station in East Sydney. Originally envisaged as “a hopper shop” (after the traditional Sri Lankan street snack) she soon found herself running one of Sydney’s best Sri Lankan Restaurants. Its authenticity was something that Carey struggled with as she rediscovered her culture through the lens of a restaurant space.

“There’s that whole thing about feeling fraudulent about Sri Lankan food because I didn’t grow up there. So, in some ways, I feel like I’m not Sri Lankan enough to be having a Sri Lankan restaurant. Since I’ve opened Lankan Filling Station, I’ve had criticism about being authentic, which is weird – because I am actually Sri Lankan,” Carey said.
 
Growing up mostly in Adelaide her Sri Lankan born mother “didn’t cook curry and rice for dinner every day because it is labour intensive and she was a single mother with a full time job” says Carey “but Mum would have dinner parties, really excellent dinner parties and that’s when the Sri Lankan food would come out.”
 
This meeting of cultures is evident in her hybrid version of Lamb Biryani.
 
“Biryani is a dish that originated in Persia or India, depending on who you speak to. Everyone’s got a version of it and of course there’s a Sri Lankan version of it as well.”
 
 
 

“Traditionally it is a celebratory dish of spiced goat or lamb baked under rice that is served at weddings or to ‘break the fast’ of Ramadan. My version uses lamb mince and spices with the rice served on the side. It’s basically a Sri Lankan version of spag bol. You start with ginger, garlic, onion and curry leaves, and then add cloves, cinnamon and cardamom which is kind of the base the base for a lot of curries, it’s actually kind of comforting,” Carey said.

Salsiccia di Bra or Bra Sausage may be the only Italian food to have ever been protected by a Royal decree.
 
Essentially a cylinder of seasoned veal meat, its origins date back to the 16th century when local butchers in Bra started using veal scraps to make a spiraling sausage that was typically eaten raw. Far from being considered a leftover food, the pork-free sausage was popular, especially with the Jewish community living in the nearby city of Cherasco.
 
Tomelleri goes to great lengths to explain to me that he isn’t contravening any law. “This one I had made at Emilio’s Specialty Butcher in Rozelle, so I can’t call it Bra Sausage – but really, it is the same,” he said.
 
Tomelleri enthuses about the frugal nature of his regional cuisine, where using everything is a way of life.
 
 
 

“We really waste nothing. We don’t buy mince, we make it for all sorts of preparations like ragu or stuffing for tortellini. You say mince is the last cheap cut left, but I don’t think of it that way, it is an essential part of the way I cook, it is the way of using everything.”

At her restaurant Chat Thai overlooking the bustle of Circular Quay, Palisa Anderson serves me Padt Grapao – a dish of stir-fried beef mince, redolent with the deep perfume of holy basil.
 
 
 

“For me this is emotive food – like any dish that is culturally important to people. This is a very simple dish, but it is a dish that every household, every parent cooks slightly differently, it’s one of those dishes that crosses boundaries.”

 
 
 
“While it’s served in the home you can also find it in any street store or any rice and curry shop, or in fine dining restaurants – all serving a variation because it really has the key ingredients that most Thais eat in some form every single day. Garlic, chili and holy basil, it’s almost like it’s a trinity.”

“Thai cuisine has a deep connection to the land because at its root it came from the things that farmers could grow or would find growing wild. Even the working animals had a final part to play as food for the people that had worked alongside it.”
 
“Thai people don’t really use prime cuts in the same way Western cuisine does. This dish was developed from working animals, so most cuts were probably tough, the beef ‘mince’ is hand cut by knife and I prefer the texture. Thai cuisine is basically a vegetable based cuisine so using meat in this way allowed it to go further and to be shared in a more communal way. This dish is a way of life and a dish that is accessible to everyone,” Anderson said.

Blackmore’s Wagyu journey started in 1988 in the USA when he saw purebred Wagyu cattle that were the descendants of four Wagyu bulls that had been exported from Japan in 1976 for research.
 
The Japanese Wagyu industry is highly protective, but trade discussions in the early 1990’s between the Japanese and US governments saw the first shipment of live full blood Wagyu, that included the first females exported from Japan in 1992. For the first time, full blood Wagyu cattle could now be bred outside of Japan. The Wagyu ban was re-imposed in 1996 and no Wagyu genetics have been exported from Japan since.
 
Meanwhile, Blackmore had established a close relationship with master Wagyu breeder Shogo Takeda – setting him up to secure the exclusive rights to import Takeda Wagyu embryos and semen into Australia. From 1992 to 2006 Blackmore imported more than 80 percent of the Wagyu genetics into Australia.
 
With his son Ben, Blackmore now runs a herd of 4,000 full blood Wagyu derived from Japan’s three most famous bloodlines. The business operates across five farms with 20 employees managing around 9,000 acres to produce high-quality Wagyu for the Australian and export markets.
 
“Wagyu is a long process so whilst 4,000 cattle seems like a lot, that only allows us to do 70 carcases a month – so it’s very small scale production but the idea is to have the very highest quality. One of the most important things we’ve tried to do is to make sure half of our beef stays in Australia and is used by Australian customers and chefs,” Ben said.

When David Blackmore first took his luxury beef to market, it was full carcase sales only – things started to change when Ben saw the enormous potential in his father’s relentless breeding and genetics work.
 
 
 

“When I first started out I was a typical farmer, I had been a stock agent and thought I could do my own marketing. I initially marketed on a per carcase basis, with half staying in Australia – of which about half of that went into Neil Perry’s restaurants who had their own butchers able to break down the carcases. The other half went to our US distributor and into restaurants like the French Laundry” David said.

 
 
 
Ben joined the business in 2009 with a Business Marketing degree and experience working in two Japanese meat trading companies, Itoham and Sojitz. He identified the value opportunity in breaking up the carcase to receive cut premiums by targeting particular markets.
 
“After university I worked for two Japanese meat companies and my first boss Paul Troja encouraged me to learn the Aus Meat handbook back to front along with the Latin names of each of the muscles. My first job, a traineeship at the Rockdale feedlot and abattoir, gave me a bit of a background in abattoirs and processing.”
 
“It is by design that we export to 15 countries – it allows us to identify different cuts that those markets will pay a premium for and with offal included we’re doing 35-40 cuts from every animal. Most people would think sending 300kg to a certain country is a waste of time, but for us, because of the higher value of the product, it could be a $15,000 – $20,000 order which makes it viable,” Ben said.

Ben also saw the opportunity to add further value to the brand by using key chefs to become ambassadors and distributors in international markets.
 
 
 

“For us, a large amount of our product is sold through restaurants and the key relationship for us there is obviously the relationship with the chef,” Ben said.

 
 
 
Perth native, chef Dave Pynt, has been instrumental in the success of the Blackmore brand in Singapore through his Asia’s 50 Best winning and Michelin-starred restaurant Burnt Ends. Having initially imported directly for his own use and creating instant classics like the raw and smoky Blackmore Beef and Uni; Pynt has now started a subsidiary wholesaler to sell Blackmore beef.
 
Curtis Stone has a similar role through his burgeoning empire in the US – initially through his Beverly Hills restaurant Maude and Gwen Butcher Shop & Restaurant in Hollywood. Stone is now ‘selling coal to Newcastle’ serving Blackmore beef to Texans through his new Dallas based restaurant and butchery, Georgie.
 
David laughs as he tells me “Curtis is a hell of an ambassador but a terrible distributor – he keeps it all for himself” to which Ben adds “of course, we don’t mind because he uses a hell of a lot”.

At 71 years, David Blackmore has ceded control and put Blackmore Wagyu into the capable hands of his son Ben – but he is far from hanging up his boots. His ‘retirement project’ is already causing a stir as he sets himself the task of producing the best grass-fed beef in Australia.
 
In 2011, David and Ben were in the chiller of their French distributor when they saw some very large and heavily marbled cuts of yellow-fat beef. The beef was from Rubia Gallega cattle, indigenous to Galicia in Northern Spain – and after a decade long journey, Blackmore has again triumphed in bringing unique luxury to Australian tables.
 
Initially meeting similar protectionist obstacles to those that he had encountered with Wagyu, Blackmore negotiated with the Rubia Gallega breed society and the Spanish Government to import embryos into Australia and in late 2017, after implanting the embryos into surrogate cows, the first Rubia Gallega calves were born in Australia.
 
 
 

“The Rubia Gallega had not been exported from Spain any time before and I believe these are the first cattle born outside of Spain in the world. It’s taken us 10 years to get to this stage from when we first saw the meat in Spain to be able to have meat to sell in Australia.”

“They’re much more heavily marbled than other European breeds, probably double that of an Angus off grass, and with the marbling comes your flavour and tenderness – the chefs are reporting back that the butt cuts are unbelievably tender with very fine texture. We’re aiming to get to about 350 breeders and to do 15 to 20 carcases a month,” David said.
 
David is clear about the fact that the Rubia Gallega is not there to compete with the Wagyu but given the similar heritage of the two breeds in being work animals, believes many of the same principles will apply.
 
 
 

“A lot of the things we learned with Wagyu we can apply to the Rubia Gallega and I think we can produce a better product than they do in Spain. I think that we will slaughter at 28-30 months, like we do with the Wagyu, because with age comes flavour. Of course, to do this we need to charge a premium price, or it would be impossible; and if we are charging a premium price then we better deliver on quality and I believe this will be some of the best grass-fed beef in the world,” David said.

 
 
 
Ben agrees, considering the Rubia Gallega as complementary to the business model and welcoming its addition to the suite of Blackmore brands.
 
“The idea was not to create another product similar to Wagyu but a product that could be really high quality off grass or supplemented pasture – the idea is it doesn’t compete with our Wagyu products but accompanies them.”
 
“Rubia Gallega are a good animal to breed, the cattle are huge, they are big gentle giants. They’re actually a dual-purpose animal, the mother’s milk is used to make a Spanish cheese and a lot of the accolades of the meat qualities come from those retired female cows.”
 
“We were getting a fair bit of publicity for the new cattle, and I said ‘Dad, remember 97 percent of our income still comes from the Wagyu, so don’t go too hard’,” Ben laughed.

When asked about the future of the Blackmore business, both men maintain that their biggest commitment is to quality. The Blackmore brand has never set out to feed the world – their customer has always been those seeking to celebrate with a luxury experience.
 
 
 

“We do a lot in our process to ensure that the flavour of our beef is unique and that starts before the animals are even born. It’s about making sure that we produce a really delicious piece of beef so that when somebody puts it in their mouth, we hope their first reaction is ‘wow’.”

 
 
 
“It’s long hours, it’s hard work and it’s about having consistency — not over a couple of months but a number of years — it’s now 30 years of two generations that has got us to this point today. We teeter on the edge of how big do you want to grow and at what size do you start to lose quality – I think we’re probably pretty happy where we are at today, it’s quite a sustainable business but who knows what the future holds,” Ben said.