Wagyu beef ‘flavour wheel’ developed to describe experience
Beef growers are taking a leaf out of the wine industry’s book with a new system of rating the flavours of different varieties. TAKE IT FOR A SPIN
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Five years ago in this column, Queensland meat maven Susan McDonald urged cattlemen and quaffers to be more like wine producers in celebrating the wide diversity of flavours and textures of our beef.
“Queensland produces the world’s best beef, yet there was little understanding of the regional differences,” she said.
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If an animal was fed grain and molasses at a feedlot, it may have a burnt caramel richness on the barbecue.
A free-range, grass-fed animal fed on native grasses would have a gentler, more herbal taste.
McDonald hails from a prominent beef family and was speaking long before she was elected to the Australian Senate.
Now one of the world’s great beef companies, AACo, has teamed with the University of Queensland’s flavour scientist Heather Smyth to create a flavour wheel to describe different cuts of high-end beef.
The wheel has a dartboard of more than 80 descriptors covering categories such as flavour, aroma, texture and “mouthfeel”.
“Beef can be as complex as wine,” Dr Smyth told me.
There were a similar number of volatiles, or complex chemical elements.
The flavour wheel was devised to describe and to differentiate the wagyu cuts and marbling grades in AACo’s prized Westholme beef.
It is one of the big export earners for the Queensland-based company and appears on the menus of top restaurants in Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, US, Europe, Dubai, UAE and Hong Kong.
And right now it is on the menu at Moo Moos steakhouses in Brisbane and on the Gold Coast.
AACo’s CEO Hugh Killen said that as Australia’s premium wagyu brand, Westholme was distinctly different from other beef brands.
He said there was a general lack of understanding around premium beef.
Killen hopes to change that with the help of the Westholme wagyu wheel.
He said it would help pave the way for premium Australian beef to stand out on menus around the world.
Smyth said flavour wheels are commonly used by the wine, seafood, coffee, beer and cocoa industries to describe flavour and sensory properties, but the science has been applied to wagyu beef for the first time.
