D'Artagnan
Online store · ships nationwide
Tier 2 · Provenance-Transparent What the tiers mean
Some links to sellers are affiliate links; we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Learn more.
Why it's listed
D'Artagnan, the storied New Jersey purveyor, sells Wagyu directly to home cooks alongside its wholesale business. Its American Wagyu is Purebred F4 Black Tajima (minimum 93.75%) raised by Midwest ranchers using Japanese-style feeding programs, and its limited Japanese A5 Wagyu is graded by a third-party auditor on the BMS scale. Provenance is clearly disclosed for both lines, though no per-order certificate of authenticity was confirmed.
Forty years of provenance as the product
D'Artagnan was founded in 1985 by Ariane Daguin and George Faison, who met working at a New York charcuterie and pooled their savings to supply foie gras and game to restaurants that could not then get either. Daguin, the daughter of a Michelin-starred Gascon chef, bought out her partner's share in 2005 and ran the company alone until it was acquired by Fortune International in March 2022. The name is the musketeer's.
That history matters for how the Wagyu is sold. This is a purveyor to restaurant kitchens that also sells to households, not a Wagyu specialist, and its beef sits in a catalogue alongside duck, game and charcuterie. The house standards it applies across all of that, named farms and no antibiotics or hormones, are the same ones it applies here.
The country of origin is on the label, which is rarer than it should be
D'Artagnan sells two different Wagyu products and says plainly which is which. The American line is specified as being from authentic Wagyu stock and, in the seller's own words, a Product of USA. The Japanese line is specified as authentic, native-breed Japanese Kuroge cattle, graded A5 at BMS 10 to 12, and a Product of Japan.
Putting the country on the product rather than in a paragraph somewhere is the single most useful disclosure a Wagyu seller can make, and a great many do not make it. Where a shop offers both origins under one word, the price is usually the only clue, and price is a bad clue. Here the answer is in the specification list on each item.
What the American grade actually is
The American product carries a marbling score, not a Japanese grade, and the seller says how it gets there: graded by a third-party auditor using the Japanese BMS scoring system. That sentence is doing more than it looks. BMS is the marbling scale; A5 is a Japanese grading outcome that applies to cattle graded in Japan, and an American producer quoting A5 is telling you about its marketing rather than its beef.
Using the BMS scale on American beef is legitimate and informative, and having an outside auditor apply it is better than self-assessment. It is simply a different claim from A5, and the difference is the one worth carrying into a comparison between this and a Japanese cut on the same page.
Listed in
Something wrong with this retailer? Tell us
Common questions
- Is D'Artagnan's Wagyu Japanese or American?
- Both, sold as separate products. Its Japanese line is specified as native-breed Kuroge cattle graded A5 at BMS 10 to 12 and labelled a Product of Japan; its American line is labelled a Product of USA and carries a BMS marbling score rather than a Japanese grade. The country is stated in each item's specifications.
- Is the American Wagyu graded A5?
- No, and it does not claim to be. It is scored on the Japanese BMS marbling scale by a third-party auditor. A5 is a Japanese grading outcome for cattle graded in Japan, so it does not apply to American beef regardless of how well marbled it is.