Thanksgiving with pedigree -- at $10 a pound

C.W. Nevius

When you sit down for Thanksgiving this year, take a moment to consider your turkey. How well do you know it, really?

Do you know where it was raised? Did you watch your bird when it was roaming free on an Internet video hookup? Do you know who its ancestors were?

No?

You mean you invited a total stranger to Thanksgiving dinner?

If this concerns you, we have the answer. A small flock of exclusive birds, called "Heritage Turkeys,'' is making an impact on Thanksgiving for serious foodies.

These birds are not just free range, drug free and organically grown. These birds have papers, going all the way back to Christopher Columbus. They are farm-raised, naturally inseminated and have their own reality TV show on the Internet.

They are also -- and proponents are a little touchy about this -- expensive. Prices at the few spots in the Bay Area that carry them range from $5.99 to $7.99 a pound, but Bon Appetit magazine, which gives Heritage turkeys the coveted "best bird'' this year, says they may run "up to $10 a pound.'' And the Heritage Web site, heritagefoodsusa.com, says turkeys ordered on their Internet site can cost up to $209. That's right, we may be entering the era of the $200 Thanksgiving turkey. What would dear old Mom say?

"We do get people who call and balk at the price,'' admits Sam Mogannam, owner of the neighborhood Bi-Rite Market in the Mission. "I cooked one for my mom last year, and she freaked out, too. And her son got it wholesale.''

Now, it is easy to make fun of this kind of conspicuous consumption (and we will), but there is a real reason for the fuss.

It begins with the traditional supermarket turkey, which has frankly become a freak. With its mammoth, genetically engineered breast, today's prototype can't even mate by itself. What's more, it is likely to have been born and raised in a cage, may rarely have touched the ground and has been pumped full of growth drugs. To many, those beach balls on sticks produce meat that tastes like parchment on a platter.

"Those are your words, not mine,'' says Dr. Scott Beyer, a poultry researcher at Kansas State University who is looking into the Heritage turkey breed. Beyer, who also works with the large-poultry food industry, wanted to make it very clear that he does not think that a Heritage turkey tastes "better'' than the supermarket kind, just "different.''

Beyer says he was interested in the Heritage birds because the Kansas farms that raise them "keep them a turkey,'' meaning that Heritage birds run free on the farm and have the distinctive tear-drop body of a wild turkey.

"And then one day I sat down and ate one,'' Beyer says. "And I said, 'These guys have a product here.' ''

The "natural'' turkey movement, of course, is nothing new. "Free range'' turkeys with stickers stipulating that there were no artificial drug injections administered have become a staple at the meat counter. But Beyer says the definitions have become so vague that "free range'' might mean turkeys raised in confinement whose only "ranging'' involved a farm hand picking up the cage and moving it a few feet.

So in terms of ethical treatment, the alternative turkeys make a worthwhile statement. But the real advantage is that the flavor of a wild turkey is a revelation, said self-confessed foodie Lisa Meyer of San Francisco.

"The first time I had one was at my brother's in Pennsylvania,'' says Meyer, who ordered a Heritage from Bi-Rite this year. "It was absolutely divine. It is richer, and the meat is more dense and flavorful.''

Those who have tried them seem to agree. Mogannam says he took a flyer with 35 Heritage birds last year, sold out, ordered 50 this year and thinks, "I may have underordered.'' Over at the Pasta Shop in Berkeley, buyer and manager Sara Feinberg has stocked 25 for each of the last two years and says she wishes she had ordered more. Too late now. According to the Web site, all the Heritage turkeys have sold out this year.

OK, so let's stipulate that "natural'' turkeys are a good idea. But how do we get from there to $10 a pound? In places like Rossmoor, the retirement community in Walnut Creek, where wild turkeys run wild, the concept of a $200 gobbler might not fly. In Rossmoor, the biggest concern isn't finding a place that sells a wild turkey; it is keeping from running over one in the parking lot.

Part of the reason for the high cost is that Heritage turkeys are allowed to grow for a full nine months -- twice the time as for the supermarket brands. There's also the problem of natural mating. For the chain store birds, the ol' turkey baster method may be less romantic, but it is efficient when you have a deadline.

And finally, says Patrick Martins, who co-founded Heritage Foods, there is the pedigree.
"It's been a closed flock for over a century,'' he said by phone from New York just before leaving for Kansas to oversee processing. "In a sense, they go back to Columbus.''

Martins' company also includes a label with each bird that details the farm that produced the food. You can even click on a link and see a photo of the farmer. There's even a "turkey cam,'' on the Heritage site, so you can view birds roaming, scratching and interacting. (The cam became considerably less interesting in the last few days when the turkeys disappeared, presumably to fulfill their Thanksgiving dinner duties.)
That, of course, is the irony. Martins' group has managed to preserve a lineage of an exclusive turkey breed that was near extinction. And now these special birds are selling for big bucks to chefs who love and appreciate them. And then cook them for dinner.

"Yep,'' says Feinberg. "You sort of have to eat them to save them.''

Columbus would approve.

C.W. Nevius' column appears regularly. His blog C.W. Nevius.blog and podcast, "News Wrap,'' can be found at SFGate.com. E-mail him at cwnevius@sfchronicle.com.