THE title of World’s Best Steak may have gone to the Warmoll family’s Jacks Creek Wagyu, but the incidental winners of the inaugural World Steak Challenge were Australia, and the Angus and Wagyu breeds.
The first World Steak Challenge was held in London’s Hyde Park last week. It is an initiative of William Reed Business Media, which also runs the World's 50 Best Restaurants and the International Wine Challenge.
The win, and its unequivocal “World’s Best” title, are a business coup for Jacks Creek, a family company that breeds and grows out its Wagyu and Angus herd on the NSW Liverpool Plains.
“It’s great for the brand and the company,” Jacks Creek managing director, Patrick Warmoll, told Fairfax Media. He intends to exploit the publicity to maximum marketing effect over the next 12 months.
The winning Jacks Creek steak was submitted by the company’s European importer, Albers gmbH. The Jacks Creek-Albers alliance introduced the first Australia-produced Wagyu into Europe about 15 years ago.
One of the valuable things about the event, in Mr Warmoll’s view, was that it was truly international. All the big beef-producing nations of North and South America were represented among the 70 entries, and many of the European countries with proud beef traditions, including England, Scotland and Ireland.
That makes it all the more significant that Australia took the highest share of the gold medals distributed among seven countries. It collected four of the 11 golds and one of the 17 silver medals.
AACo won gold with another Wagyu-cross steak from its Darling Downs Wagyu brand.
The animal was bred on Avon Downs Station in the Northern Territory, and finished on grain for 300 days at the company’s Aronui feedlot near Dalby on the Darling Downs.
It is the latest of a string of wins for the AACo brand, which was named Grand Champion Beef at the Royal Queensland Food and Wine Show and Champion Wagyu at the Sydney Royal Spring Food and Wine Show.
Rangers Valley, a lotfeeding operation near Glen Innes, NSW, that has long specialised in high-quality long-fed beef, won gold for an Angus steak from its Premium Marble Reserve brand. The company also won a silver medal.
Another gold went to Australian beef via Dutch meat wholesaler Jan Zandenberg for steak from its “1788 Platinum” label. The 1788 label is used to define the importer’s Australian product.
Jan Zandenberg’s 1788 is underpinned by mostly Angus or Angus-cross cattle fed at Whyalla feedlot in southern Queensland. It is one of the company’s several “provenance” brands, like USA Beef, Charrua (Uruguay), and Arena Montana from other South American countries.
If the World Steak Challenge put the world on notice that Australia can produce a damn good steak, it also gave an insight into just how dominant the Angus breed is in the world of high-end beef, and how important Wagyu is becoming as a means of vaulting the beef eating experience to new heights.
Angus genetics contributed to the steaks that won eight of the 11 gold medals, and 10 of the 17 silvers.
Angus Australia chief executive Peter Parnell attributed the breed’s dominance to proven tenderness, taste and overall eating quality.
“Marbling is an important component of this quality reputation in grain-fed Angus beef, but even grass finished Angus beef with relatively low marbling content has been proven to provide a consistently high quality eating experience.”
The breed isn’t resting on its laurels. Angus Australia is continuing to develop traits like marbling and other meat quality measures (tenderness score, MSA Index) through the Angus Sire Benchmarking Program, and delivering them to breeders through new and more accurate Angus BREEDPLAN Estimated Breeding Values.
The association is also “well down the track” of developing DNA based tests for difficult to measure traits like eating quality, Mr Parnell said.
Only three entries contained Wagyu genetics, but all earned gold medals. Two of these winners were Australian - Jacks Creek and AACo - and the other Japanese.
The pure Wagyu entry from Japan may have been too rich for judges’ palates in a country that values grassfed beef production, Patrick Wormall guessed.
The Jacks Creek steak, verified to be at least 75 per cent Wagyu, appeared to hit the right balance between marbling, meat and flavour.
What makes a steak the best in the world?
“We thought we might get a gold medal,” Patrick Warmoll of Jacks Creek Wagyu said of the buildup to the World Steak Challenge, “but we didn’t think we had a chance against the Japanese Wagyu, or that the US entry would pip us at the post.”
As it turned out, Jacks Creek had a winning chance. With its European importer, Albers gmbH, the family company won the accolade of World’s Best Steak at last week’s World Steak Challenge.
The meat came from an F2 Wagyu animal (minimum 75 per cent Wagyu) bred and grown out on the Wormall family’s Liverpool Plains properties, fed for 450 days at Maydan feedlot near Warwick, Queensland, and slaughtered at about 30 months back across the border at the Northern Cooperative Meat Company works in Casino, NSW.
Mr Warmoll guessed that one of the attributes of the Australian beef in the Challenge was its age: it was all shipped by sea freight.
The other was the robustness of taste in the Australian product, a product of the Australian terroir familiar to connoisseurs of wine or lamb.
“It’s just got a beefier flavour,” Mr Warmoll said. “United States beef is fed with corn, so its much richer but that can detract from the beef flavour. In the UK (the Challenge was held in London) grassfed beef is predominant, and they are looking for that beef taste.”
Marbling was probably the defining feature of the Jacks Creek product, Mr Warmoll said.
His uncle, David Warmoll, has been selecting Wagyu bulls since 1991 based on fineness of marbling, aided by carcass feedback from Jacks Creek’s own slaughtering.
“It was probably that cobweb of marbling that made our product stand out from the Angus, or from the Japanese Wagyu, which was probably a bit too heavy on the palate to be a great steak.”