Description
Beef and Mutton from the Carmarthenshire hills
Our Aim …
… is to bring you the best beef and mutton you will ever taste. The secret is (1) older animals, (2) grass-feeding and (3) super-ageing after slaughter. We slaughter grass-fed ex-suckler heritage beef cows around five years of age. Then we hang the carcase in the chiller for no fewer than fifty-six days. At 56 days something extraordinary begins to happen. The increase in tenderness is dramatic. The taste becomes deeper and more complex. The meat enzymes have done their work! We begin to approach, if you will forgive the expression, ‘meatopia’.
Our Environment
Contrary to what you might hear, the environmental impact of raising sheep and cattle is low. Our animals hang out in fields during the summer and eat silage, harvested grass, in winter. They are never ‘finished’ on grain in ‘feed-lots’.
After all, sheep and cattle are grazing animals. Their digestive system, with its four stomachs, is far more complex than ours. Ruminants are inefficient at digesting grain but perfectly-designed to extract every last ounce of nutrition out of grass and meadow flowers. 26% of the earth’s surface is pasture. Ruminants are prey animals whose purpose on this earth is to convert what we cannot eat (that’s grass!) slowly but surely into what we can – high-quality, high-protein muscle meat, packed with essential vitamins and nutrients.
Our Pricing
Our meat costs little more than what the supermarkets charge for their highest quality. But the similarity ends there. Our beef is twice as old and hung for twice as long as even the ‘best’ beef from the big firms. Our older stock brings more flavour and our super-ageing delivers taste the ‘big boys’, with their need for throughput, can only dream of.
These days produce can be flown half-way round the world to satisfy modern food fads. When you choose our super-aged beef or mutton, you know the animals have been well cared-for and you are buying local, from farm to fork, keeping those food miles to the bare minimum. That’s why meat from Fferm Wernlwyd (Grey Alders) is the very best – and doesn’t cost the earth.
Ian (verified owner) –
good, friendly service – felt valued customer throughout. Exceptional produce – fully aged meat at a fair price.
Lorena (verified owner) –
Delicious beef, amazing flavour, fantastic value, lasted a greedy family of four a month
Percy and Hilary Williams (verified owner) –
Wernlwyd beef is absolutely delicious. We bought a box of it during a stay at Grey Alders and took it straight home to the freezer. The meat can be cooked in a variety of ways. We recently mixed the diced beef with chopped up wild garlic leaves from the local woodlands and this imparted a gentle spicy flavour to the meat, which everyone enjoyed. The beef joints were kept for special family gatherings and delighted everyone. Our methods vary from a standard roast, Romertopf clay vessel to slow cooker. We quickly fry the steaks with chopped garlic in the fat and then complete the cooking in the slow cooker with a layer of onions on top followed by a layer of potatoes, then a layer of parsnip and finally a layer of carrot. The meat is not only flavoursome, but of a tender texture. When cooked in a slow cooker, the juices can be turned into a gravy, which we guess must be healthy as well as a good accompaniment to the meal. A glass of red wine goes well with the beef meals and we recommend the Merlot from Lidl’s (the label with a fish on it). Despite being a cheap wine, it always tastes good (provided you have it with your beef meal and not with your dessert!). We would definitely buy another box of Wernlwyd beef.