Amazing Graze Wagyu: Redding Resident Gene Nazzaro Fulfills Lifelong Dream of Becoming a Cattle Farmer

Andrew Dominick March 05, 2026

Don’t tell Gene Nazzaro it’s too late to realize a dream. After a lifetime in his family’s namesake excavating business, he’s moved onto greener pastures, and that’s in the literal sense.

While he’s still semi-active in Nazzaro Inc., which specializes in residential, commercial, and municipal excavation, and pond dredging, his newfound passion is cattle farming for beef production for his brand, Amazing Graze Wagyu.

“I still do some excavating because I can’t say no to my loyal customers, but my son runs it now,” Nazzaro says. “Since I was a child, I always thought being a farmer would be wicked cool and I love the people you meet doing it. I love cattle. If you’re gonna jump into something, jump in the deep end.”

*Nazzaro is always excited to talk about cattle and beef, but something else he’s stoked about is an almost $1 million grant he received from the USDA to do a study on feeding efficiency.*
“We’re just setting it up now,” he says. Every 30 days, we’ll more 24 head to a different pen. They’ll be electrically identified to monitor what their food consumption is when they’re eating and they’ll be weighed, and it’ll monitor water consumption to know how many gallons they’re drinking; which are doing well, which ones are non-producing. It’s a five-year study working with the dairy industry. The beef industry has never worked with the dairy industry, but the dairy industry realized we have the opportunity to bring cross breed them for high quality meat.”

Maybe it’s not such a stretch, however. One of Nazzaro’s interests before cattle farming took hold is horses; riding them and “cutting,” which is a farming act or a competition where the horse and its rider will separate a cow from its herd to prevent it from rejoining the herd.

“I had a farm in Virginia and I raised Angus grass fed cattle there, but grass fed, to me, is just OK; sometimes it’s really good, sometimes it’s gamey” Nazzaro says. “I was studying about wagyu beef to try to improve upon my quality of beef. I saw there was a seminar going on in Vermont at Vermont Wagyu, so I attended it, and it turns out the head veterinarian is someone I used to ride horses with, Roger Osinchunk. He grew up raising cattle on a farm in Alberta, so he knows all about it and gave me advice on how to go about it.”

To fully immerse himself in raising cattle to produce American wagyu beef, Nazzaro sold his Virgina farm because of travel logistics back and forth to Redding, Connecticut. He partnered with an F1 cattle company to acquire the first offspring from purebred parents to breed them on his new farmland in Vermont and later, he brings the cattle to his 7-8 acres across the street from his home in Redding, Connecticut.

But what makes Amazing Graze’s meat so good? Nazzaro says it’s all about the bloodlines, what they’re fed (and not force fed), and how they’re raised—to roam freely in pastures.

“Our wagyu crossbred cattle are 50% full-blooded Wagyu, crossed with full-blooded French Charolais (Gyulais), Angus and Holstein cattle,” he explains. “Our full-blooded wagyu bulls carry the heritable genetics of marbling. What makes it American Wagyu is the 50% that comes from the bull, the other 50 comes from the other cattle. Once the cattle are weaned off their moms, we put them on grass and a 14% protein feed. Other farms put them in a feed lot that’s 40 to 100 thousand cattle, they pump them full of antibiotics, and try to force feed them so they’ll gain four-pounds a day. When they do this, you end up with big chunks of fat in the meat. On the outside they’ll have cover fat, but on the inside, you won’t have that balance. In my meat, the fat will melt at 72 degrees rather than 120. You won’t find this type of marbling in grocery store commodity beef.”

When the cattle are ready for processing at 18-24 months old, Nazzaro transports them up to New England Meat Packing, a small boutique USDA packing house in Stafford Springs, a facility that he swears by for its cleanliness and process.

“They’re stunned first so they’re incapacitated; they bleed out hanging upside down, they take the hide off, and they’re tagged for ownership,” he says. “They’re cooled quickly and they hang and age for 14-21 days. There’s a custom cut sheet of what I specifically want. From there, they’re cut, Cryovac sealed and flash frozen for optimal taste. There’s no nitrogen like in grocery store packs. Twenty-one days is ideal (for aging). When I go to restaurants and see a 57-day dry aged steak, you look at it, and it’s like, I don’t want to eat that.”

The result of Nazzaro’s cattle raising methods are well-marbled cuts that he says, “Once people make a purchase, they enjoy it, and they always come back.”

Whether you’re ordering online or setting up a time to swing by his home to shop the freezers in his garage, you can expect cuts that include filet, short rib, picanha, ribeye, flat iron, flank, tongue, tri-tip, marrow bones, ground beef, and his personal favorite, the strip, and if you’re one of those folks who can’t get enough beef, quarter, half, or a whole cow are available.

*Amazing' Graze’s ground beef is featured in Georgetown Owl Saloon’s signature burger w/smoked gouda, caramelized onions, and tomato jam on a brioche bun.*

*And in the meatballs at Dante’s Pizza in New Canaan.*

Restaurants are also calling. Some of his loyal wholesale accounts are Truck in Bedford, NY, who Nazzaro says buys 120-pounds of his ground beef each week; Dante’s Pizza in New Canaan who uses Amazing Graze’s ground beef in their meatballs; Georgetown Owl Saloon’s burger is made with that same grind and they sell cuts in their adjoining market; and Community Shellfish in Bethel carries it, too.

“Send me an email or call me, show up, and we’ll talk about what you want,” Nazzaro says. “I want to make the best and sell the best. I won’t sell junky cuts like shanks, so those, I grind it up and sell it at a favorable price. My steaks are the strongest price point, but still below what they should be. How do you grow something without having a huge ego? You price yourself out of the market. I’d rather develop a business and make strong relationships.”

amazinggrazewagyu.com