BY BAILEY S. BARNARD | MAR. 24TH, 2021 | ORIGINAL ARTICLE
One of California’s premier beef farms will deliver its Prime-grade, purebred, and 100% grass-fed Wagyu beef to your door through its delivery and subscription service. And the meat is as good (if not better) than any cuts you will get from a Michelin-starred restaurant. The farm is called Genesee Valley Ranch, the service is called Brasas at the Table, and the meat will make you a grill hero this summer—especially during the pandemic, when eating at home is still safer than dining out.
Genesee Valley Ranch is a 1,600-acre property surrounded by the Plumas National Forest in California gold country, about 100 miles northwest of Lake Tahoe. The property was established in the 1860s by a miner-turned-rancher and today it is home to some 350 of California’s happiest cows. In 2015, the ranch was purchased by the Palmaz family, whose Palmaz Vineyards produces some very highly rated wines in Napa Valley and who helped increase the property’s beef production in humane and sustainable ways.
The Palmaz family has been a technological pioneer for improving vineyard growth and the winemaking process, including data-capturing aerial infrared photography to monitor grapes and utilizing gravity from their mountainside winery to move wine to various stages of production. The family has brought much of that knowledge base to Genesee Valley Ranch, 750 acres of which are irrigated by snowmelt from mountains and network of streams. That creates more than 1 square mile of natural pastureland to feed its cows, which the ranch manages with the help of an aerial monitoring systems similar to the one used at Palmaz Vineyards. This system allows the ranch to move the herd to areas of the ranch where the land’s nutrient-rich native grasses are in the optimal growth cycle and so the animals don’t overgraze.
So, that brings us back to the extraordinary beef that you can cook from the comfort of your own grill. Genesee Valley Ranch launched Brasas at the Table mid 2019, offering cuts you can purchase one order at a time or through a subscription membership club, with eight cuts per shipment and frequency from weekly to twice a year. Weekly membership is priced at $525 per shipment (for six weeks); quarterly and semi-annual memberships are $550 per shipment.
Every cut of the cow is available—from tenderloin filets, New York strips, rib eye, and tomahawks to tri tip, brisket, ground beef, bratwurst, smoked beef bacon, and even a bone broth kit—and the beef is good, really good. The New York strip steak ($170 for two 14-ounce cuts), for example, is rich with marbling, but not so much that it overpowers the flavor of the beef, as is the case with overpriced Wagyu you find at some high-end restaurants. Brasas also offers recipe recommendations with each cut to help make you a grill master at home, as well as a wine membership club, so you have something to pair with your meal.
