IN MARKET GROWING DEMAND CAN AUSTRALIAN BEEF GET BETTER WITH AGE? SA beef producer and restaurateur Tim Burvill was intriguedwhen he heard that 17-year-old cows in northern Spainwere producing steaks destined for Michelin-starred restaurants throughout Europe. He has been working with MLA Donor Company’s Producer Innovation Fast-Track program to see if he can replicate the productionsystem in Australia. Txuleton (pronounced choo-le-ton)Together they own two SA beef beef is produced in the Basque properties running Hereford cattle, region that surrounds the Spanisha butchery and dry-ageing facility culinary city of San Sebastian. in the Adelaide Hills, and the A The beef is renowned for its Hereford Beefstouw restaurants in intensity of flavour, with the Adelaide and Melbourne. They also most highly sought-after productproduce the Kings+Queens branded coming from local Galician Blondproduct, supplying their Australian breed cows. With the beef style’srestaurants, the Damgaard family’s popularity exploding among 13 Scandinavian restaurants and high-end European diners, Basquehigh-end Australian butchers, producers have begun finishing supermarkets and restaurants. retired dairy cows for the txuletonExperiment design market as well. In this project, Tim is asking the “I’d heard of this style of beef andquestions: can South Australian was intrigued because it goes Cattle Co produce txuleton-quality against everything we do in our beef from old Australian cows, and is production system in Australia,”the overall value proposition viable? Tim (pictured right) said. The next phase of the project is set “I knew the product must be good, to begin this year and will leave though, because a number of old cows (seven to nine years of Michelin-starred restaurants wereage) on a pasture-based system serving it. for varying degrees of time (one to two years) to replicate the Basque “We have two restaurants in beef production model. Australia and my initial inquiry was“The cattle will then be processed, ‘how do I get some of this beef?’dry-aged for 40 days in our facility, You can’t import beef from the EUcooked by our chefs in our A into Australia, so I decided it mightHereford Beefstouw restaurants pay to look further into producingand assessed for meat quality by this style of beef ourselves.” a sensory panel. We’ll also look at Tim, his wife Sarah, and Danish how we could scale this opportunity business partner Lars Damgaard up and the next steps to develop operate the South Australian a plan to market test this with Cattle Co. consumers,” Tim said. 40