MATSUZAKA BEEF
In Japan, beef is graded on a 12-point marbling scale (the higher the number, the more layers of fat). While the well-known Kobe beef scores a six, Matsuzaka’s clocks in at a whopping 10 to 12, making it arguably the finest beef in all the land. Matsuzaka cows are kept virginal during their time in remote Mie prefecture, which farmers swear affects the taste of the finished product. They’re also plied with beer to encourage their appetites, massaged regularly with a stiff brush to evenly distribute their fat, and generally coddled for all three years of their life (an unusually long life for beef cows). The result is beef so richly marbled as to resemble fine art. It literally melts in your mouth should you be lucky enough to snag a bite, which — at over $200 per pound wholesale — doesn’t come cheap.
SISTERON LAMB
Sheep have been grazing in this lush corner of Provence, in the foothills of the French Alps for thousands of years. These PGI (Protected Geographical Indication)-designated lambs are raised in accordance to traditional methods, roaming freely and munching on such wild grasses and herbs as rosemary and thyme. Only three rustic local sheep breeds (Mérinos d’Arles, Préalpes du Sud, and Mourérous) are allowed to propagate; lambs must be raised on their mother’s milk for at least two months of their three-to-six month lives. No Sisteron lamb will ever taste silage (fodder), and every locally dispatched animal is sold with a “raised in Sisteron” label and a barcode that can reveal its farm. Locals claim you can taste the herbs that the lambs snacked on in their meat, prized for smooth, sweet taste and rosy pink hue.
SHAKOTAN UNI
Sea urchins are wild animals. They’re not raised in the conventional sense, but the harvesting procedure for what ultimately ends up as the sweet, briny uni on your sushi meal i s intensive enough to qualify. In pristine Shakotan Peninsula, off the west coast of the Japan’s northern island Hokkaido, fishermen wake before dawn to assess the weather; if it’s calm enough, they’ll spend hours leaning over the sides of boats in search of urchins to collect with a long claw tool. (Uni harvesters in Maine and California free-dive to depths of 20 to 30 feet in cold, choppy water to scrape individual urchins by hand.) The labor-intensive process can pay off very well: From June to August, when Shakotan uni is at its freshest, a single, meticulously packed, beautifully presented tray can go for more than $250 at Tokyo’s famed Tsukiji market, setting the top price for all unis.
POULET ROUGE CHICKEN
Already known for $215-a-pop Poulet de Bresse capons, French farmers adhering to the government-sponsored Label Rouge program have been following strict quality standards for more workaday heritage-breed chickens for decades. The poulet rouge (from the redbro cou nu, or naked-neck chicken, breed) are
renowned for their thin skin, lean bodies and rich, fully flavored meat. The best-known producer in the US is North Carolina-based Poulet Rouge Fermier du Piedmont, where chickens ($15 to 20 each) are raised for nearly twice as long as commodity breeds in sprawling indoor-outdoor pastures in which they’re fed an all-grain diet, given shiny toys to play with, and even exposed to classical music.
JAMÓN IBÉRICO DE BELLOTA
Contributing perhaps the most storied of all pork products, black-skinned Ibérian pigs live the ultimate life of luxury before their demise (or “sacrifice,” as it is referred to by locals) on top of Spain’s cured ham hierarchy. The pigs run freely across sprawling, partially forested 1,000- to 2,000acre farms for nearly two years (more than twice as long as most commercial breeds) until they reach a weight of 360 pounds; they munch on grasses, herbs and their favorite food, acorns ( bellota), which are rich in the oleic acid that lends its distinctly nutty, olive-like flavor to the finished product. The Spanish government strictly controls all aspects of production and has a distinct labeling system to match; the highest grade is jamón Ibérico de bellota which means pure-bred Ibérico pigs that have gained at least a third of their weight from only foraged acorns and grass while aging at least three years. It’ll set you back about $100 per pound.
Now, the coolest part of Vacum is that the company sells every cut of meat with a QR code. This, as Vacum calls it, is their “Beef Passport” — when scanned by any smartphone’s QR reader, it shows the location where the cow was raised, the age of the steak cut, the slaughter date, the age of the cow, and so on. This is an incredible and ingenious innovation in terms of quality statement and storytelling.
ABALONE: GALICIAN MARINE AQUACULTURE (GMA)
It is very unlikely that you can call Spain an abalone producing country, and that was why I did not pass up visiting the booth of Galician Marine Aquaculture or GMA.
The abalone is a sea creature belonging to the Gastropoda Mollusk family, also known as marine snails. Abalone meat is quite expensive and abalone is a huge delicacy especially in Asia. China is the world’s largest source of abalone, and also its biggest consumer. Other Asian countries like Japan, Taiwan, and Korea are also big consumers. I tasted the abalone samples sliced into small cuts and cutely incorporated into tapas servings, and they tasted as abalone should. Spanish abalone has arrived.
GMA was founded in the 2003 not as a company but as a project of the University of Santiago de Compostela. This project was to become a leading company in the field of sustainable development and growth of new up-market marine species with value added potential, starting with the successful comprehensive growth of abalone production — something not yet done before, especially in Spain. The project was awarded first prize in the 3rd Concurso de Iniciativas Empresariales (Business Initiatives Contest) of the University of Santiago de Compostela in the category of Technology-based projects and GMA was officially formed.
Since then, GMA has grown and diversified, and has become one of the few companies officially authorized to introduce and grow nonnative species. Now GMA is considered the model of diversification of the aquaculture sector towards up-market products. The company currently has the largest marine production plant of its kind in Europe, located on the estuary of MurosNoia. It covers a surface of 25,000 square meters and there are further expansion plans. Through the combination of strategic location, a talented team, and state-of-the-art technology, GMA is able to produce abalone all year round — from the seeding process to the ready-to-sell seafood. GMA can produce over 3 million abalones yearly, and this may in fact bring down the astronomical prices of abalone as we are accustomed to. It is just strange that China, which can produce cheaper products, may now be selling more expensive abalones than Spain. So in the very near future, we may be eating Spanish abalone in a Chinese restaurant. ----------
The author has been a member of the Federation Internationale des Journalists et Ecrivains du Vin et des Spiritueux or FIJEV since 2010. For comments, inquiries, wine event coverage, and other wine-related concerns, e-mail the author at protegeinc@yahoo.com. He is also on Twitter at twitter.com/sherwinlao. www.