Overview
What Makes Great Beef?
We love beef. We love the way it tastes, the animals it comes from, and the cowboys who care for them. We love the open grasslands where our cattle graze. We love the taste of a great steak.
We believe in the traditions that have proven successful over centuries at producing great beef. We believe in the wisdom of cowboys. We're proud that our cows never see a feedlot. Grilling steaks and burgers with friends and family is our favorite kind of dinner party.
We believe that truly great beef can only come from healthy and happy animals who are treated with dignity and respect. We know that a consistent food source of high protein grass is as essential to producing great beef as selecting the best breeds for our herds and the best animals for processing.
Real Beef Taste
If you've never tasted pasture-raised, grass-fed beef, then you're in for a real treat. Bite into an Estancia burger or steak and you can taste the terroir, the grasslands where our animals are raised, the fertile earth and year-round rainfall. Just like with wine, olive oil, and honey, the food our animals eat and the land where they roam comes out in the flavor of their meat.
Estancia beef has a complex, beefy flavor, with none of the mouth-coating, buttery residue that grain-fed beef often leaves behind. Our beef has been described as tasting "bright" and "beefy" and "real" but you feel light after you're done eating, as if you'd eaten fish. Feedlot beef leaves you feeling greasy and stuffed. Estancia beef finishes clean on your palate and doesn't weigh you down.
Imagine Healthy Beef
Imagine clean cows grazing endless pastures of bright green grass, their bodies recently washed by a soft rain shower. The Herefords are bright white and tawny brown, the Angus gleaming black. Imagine beef that's healthy for you to eat because it comes from healthy animals raised on grass, the diet they evolved over thousands of years to consume.
Our grass-fed beef has about half the fat and cholesterol of grain-fed beef, with health benefits similar to those that come from eating salmon. Imagine a burger that's as good for you as a fish dinner. Imagine healthy beef.
Beef 2.0
We want to share our beef with the world and by doing so change the way people think about this delicious source of protein. Beef is good for you if it's the right kind of beef. We want people to understand why grass-fed, pasture-raised cows are clean and healthy and why the beef that comes from them tastes delicious and is an excellent source of low-fat protein.
The owners and employees of Estancia are ranchers and animal lovers. We raise cattle in Virginia, California, Argentina, and Uruguay. We ride horses and go camping. We are passionate about biodynamic agriculture and solar power. We believe that combining new technology and common sense with proven traditions is the way to produce healthy, delicious beef.
We're excited about introducing our beef to markets all over the world, especially in places where people have forgotten that beef can be as good for you as it is delicious. Estancia is the future of great beef.
Safety First & Last
From pasture to plate we make sure our cows, processing facility, and beef are clean and safe. Our systems and protocols allow us to trace every steak back to the animal it came from, and every animal back to the ranch where it was raised. Our processing facility is state-of-the-art, newly-constructed, and leads the industry in safety protocols, third-party audits, and traceability.
Happy Cows
Green grass and no feedlots! We're serious about the well-being of our animals. Each has access to more than two acres of green grass for most of its life and none of our animals ever sees a feedlot. Healthy, non-stressed animals make for healthy meat that you can feel good about eating. We like to say that our animals only have one bad day.
Sustainable Steak
Grass-fed, pasture-raised beef means a smaller carbon footprint, no concentration of waste in a small area (a hallmark of all feedlot operations), and no contamination (waste, antibiotics and/or growth hormones) from run-off into the local water system.
Our animals fertilize the pastures on our ranches. Our naturally-occurring pastures feed our animals. You eat our delicious beef. It's a sustainable and healthy cycle, one that respects the planet, the animals, and you.
Estancia is beef the way nature intended it to be.
