Obviously getting messages like this really make your day.

Obviously getting messages like this really make your day. Aside from the animal breeding and husbandry there are a lot of people involved to make it the best product we possibly can. The abattoir we use is a small scale family run one, which specialises in traditional breed meat. Their set up and experience is such that the animals are calm and peaceful with virtually no stress, until the last second. This is important for a number of reasons. The emotional aspect is one, sending a beast you’ve looked after to slaughter always gives pause for thought, but quality of product is paramount. Less stress simply is better meat. Then the slaughter men are time served craftsmen who use huge amounts of care and skill in how they kill and dress the carcass. This is also crucial to how the animal will hang. Left to hang in the body for two weeks before the butchers who have a lifetimes experience in boning out beef, break it down into primals and then cuts. This is usually then dispatched same day to our customers. I think this chef’s remark about not being overly aged and cheesy beef is telling. There is a current fashion for dry ageing average beef for ages and ages to give it more flavour. What happens here though is your just tasting the dry-age not the beef. It’s something people dealing in traditional animals and really good beef discuss fairly often as in some ways as a bit of a cheat/fad/shortcut to add flavour but interestingly it’s the second time both ever, and in a week that a top chef has mentioned it to me.