Wine-fed cows a hit with chefs

The B.C. wine industry just got a big boost from a new market segment: Cows. Unfortunately, these cows meet a sad end -- but they do spend 90 of their last days living it up, drinking red Okanagan wine, and they do seem to like it. At least, they moo more and seem to "talk to each other." Could they be comparing vintages and talking about leathery notes in the wine of the day? The idea of feeding wine to cows was hatched by Janice Ravndahl of Sezmu Meats in Kelowna. (Sezmu is the Egyptian god of wine.) She introduced it to local high-end chefs who, in turn, became drunk with glee. It began one day when she was sitting around, having a glass of wine, watching The F Word, a Gordon Ramsay TV cooking show. She saw him giving a taste of beer to some pigs he was raising. Coming from five generations of cattle ranchers, she thought, "why not cows?" She phoned her brother, who told her exactly why not. "Because the carbonation would bloat them," he said. Ravndahl then thought: "Why not wine?" The Angus cows are each fed a litre of Okanagan red wine (granted, nothing our wine writer Anthony Gismondi would drink) every day. It's mixed into the feed but some like to drink the wine straight up. She says the beef is priced about 15-per-cent higher than regular free-range, hormone and antibiotic-free beef...more