Canada's insider blog

According to rancher Janice Ravndahl, Sezmu Meats is what happens when you watch too much Food Network and have a serious love of wine.

After watching chef Gordon Ramsay feed beer to his pigs on Food Network TV show "The F Word", Ravndahl thought she'd try feeding her Angus cattle a local beverage as well. She opted for the wine that was being produced right at her door in the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia.

The experiment led to the creation of Sezmu Meats, a company that specializes in wine-fed beef. Sezmu cows are treated to one litre of red wine per day for 60 days before they meet their maker. That’s equivalent to a glass of wine a day for an average human adult and according to Ravndahl, is the sweet spot to get the perfect hint of wine coming through in the flavour of the beef.

And it’s not just Ravndahl who thinks so. Sezmu has proved to be a hit with local Canadian chefs, with some of the country’s top restaurants featuring it on their menu, including Okanagan winery restaurants at Quail's Gate and Mission Hill, and Blue Water Café and Chambar Restaurant in Vancouver.

The Okanagan has long had a reputation as one of Canada’s prime wine-producing regions and now prime beef production can be added to the list. After all, what goes better with red wine than perfectly cooked and seasoned red meat?