The most prized beef in the world is also raised in the Empordà

Parlavà (Lower Empordà)Wagyu beef is one of the most prized culinary jewels in the world. Its marble of fat infiltrated between the muscles makes the pieces of this bovine breed a highly prized and exclusive product among lovers of red meat. They are typical animals originally from Japan, but in Catalonia there are also some farms that are dedicated to raising them. The pioneer is Mas Parnau, in Parlavà (Baix Empordà), a small family farm that, with the Montgrí massif as a backdrop, is dedicated to feeding about 120 heads of wagyu cows and calves.

Since he began working with this highly prized breed, Aleix Parnau, who runs the farm with his father, sells the noblest parts to restaurants or individual clients. The sirloin, the entrecote or the hamburgers are in high demand, but, on the other hand, the rest of the slaughtered animal is difficult to sell on the market. For this reason, for months, Parnau has teamed up with another farmer, Jordi Ginabreda, from Casa Mundet, in Sant Esteve de Guialbes (Pla de l'Estany) to make wagyu sausages with all the fat and lean left over. Parnau provides the raw material for the meat and Ginabreda, the workshop facilities.

This is a unique product in Catalonia, truly original, made with top quality meat, which would be a sin to waste. For the moment, Ginabreda and Parnau have started with the cured meats —fuete, bayona, sobrasada and chorizo— and now they dare to try out cooked meats such as white boil. The recipes are the same as for pork sausages, but the result is quite different: the fibre is somewhat more pleasant, the aroma very strong, but the taste, on the other hand, is softer, finer and slightly sweet. They don't remind you of beef jerky, as they don't have the stench of aging or smoking, and they are also very buttery, because the fat of the wagyu, which is very oleic, practically melts at room temperature, so it sweats and absorbs the meat very well.

Quality vs. quantity: the difference with large producers

"From an animal like this you get 500 or 600 kg of carcass, 80 or 90 of which are fat, because, to achieve this infiltration, they make a very thick cover, so, with the sausages, we revalue all this fat, which is of good quality for the animals and their capacity to absorb, u.

Ginabreda, who, apart from his dealings with Parnau also has a small Angus farm and makes his conventional pork sausages, points out the importance of standing out from the large meat industries: "Small producers only have to survive with things, we have to survive with animal things, getting a more extraordinary and exclusive product that stands out from the large farms, which have 5,000 calves and lower costs," he argues. Ginabreda is also one of the most visible faces of the the Labrador Revolt movement in the Girona region.

All the sausages, like the meat, are sold by Ginabreda and Parnau directly from their home to interested consumers, who know them personally, by word of mouth, or have seen them on social networks. However, they do not have the vocation to grow, or to produce in bulk, but through an organization of local cooperatives, they already distribute by cold courier throughout the Girona regions. Despite the exclusivity of the product, the price is not excessively expensive: around €30/kg for whips and chorizos, and €35 or €40/kg for sobrasada and bayona. "They have the price they should have, a pig takes seven months to fatten, while a wagyu, 2 years. It is like an acorn-fed ham, which has exceptional quality and, therefore, is more expensive," says Parnau.

Wagyus surrounded by dairy cows

At Mas Parnau de Parlavà, the hundred or so Wagyu cattle grow up surrounded by Friesian dairy cows. In fact, insemination with Wagyu genetics is carried out with the same Friesian cows and, from there, the first 50-50 offspring come out, with the characteristic black colour and the infiltration typical of the Japanese breed. Then, from the females resulting from this first cross, new puppies come out, in this case 75% Wagyu and 25% Friesian, although the differences with the first procreation are not perceived.

Once the Wagyu cattle are no longer puppies and no longer need to be breastfed, Parnau fattens them up with olive cake (the vegetable residue accumulated after the oil filtration process), to stimulate the fat of the animals. Then, they are slaughtered from the age of two, when they are older. In Japan, however, they are fed with very fatty secret preparations, in greater quantities, more intensely and from birth, in the style of ducks with foie-gras.. In Japan, in order to stimulate the growth of marrow even more, the animals are raised completely still, whereas in Parlavà they can walk freely through the forest. "Due to animal welfare regulations, we cannot do what they do in Japan here. They create an obese animal, they fatten them from birth, they do not move and suffer from joint problems. We do not seek this extreme, we only want a calf with a higher level of infiltration than normal, which we achieve with a very careful diet and the component.