Consumers say 'oui' to Quebec's cheeses
STE. HELENE-DE-CHESTER, QUEBEC -- An enormous long-haired dog is sleepily guarding the barn at La Moutonniere, a cheesemaking operation in this central Quebec hill town. Inside the barn, it's feeding time. Sheep are jostling and bleating as they wait their turn. Farmer Alastair MacKenzie opens the stall gate, and a dozen sheep at a time take their place at a row of terra cotta planters that serve as mangers.
While the sheep eat, MacKenzie, 38, milks them, talking to the animals and massaging their udders. The sheep's milk will go into one of eight varieties of cheese, including a sweet, mild blue cheese streaked with an earthy tang. Cheesemakers here have come into their own and are being sought out by connoisseurs. No longer known only for Oka, the wash-rind cheese associated with this region, some Quebecois have won awards in the United States. Many cheeses are shipped to Montreal, where the specialty markets display them proudly. MacKenzie's sheep milk goes to a tiny cheese plant beneath Lucille Giroux's farmhouse, a few hundred yards from the milking parlor. Giroux, 52, founded La Moutonniere. What began as a small cheese business making feta 12 years ago is a thriving enterprise today. MacKenzie, a transplanted New Zealander, and Giroux have built a cheese cave, where they age a few of their products before sending them to market. At Fromagerie du Marche Atwater in Montreal, demand for local artisanal cheese has been booming since the 1990s, and new cheesemakers have been appearing all over Quebec. "If they took the time to make a good product, they succeeded," says the market's owner, Gille Jourdenais. Now, in an area roughly the size of New England, 49 cheesemakers are producing 150 different cheeses, Jourdenais estimates.
In his little shop, customers squeeze by a refrigerated case displaying delicate rounds and pyramids of goat cheese. Behind the main counter, six employees offer tastes from the shop's selection of 600 different cheeses. The fromagerie has expanded twice since it opened in 1974, and Jourdenais would like to acquire more space, but can't. "I have no more neighbors to buy," he explains.
Jourdenais says that Quebecers' "genes with the French" go a long way toward explaining the success of his shop. In recent decades, travel to Europe has become popular, and the average Quebecer's palate has broadened. "People aren't just cooking steaks on the grill anymore," he says. "They come in with a recipe and a list of ingredients, and they try to match the cheese with their menu." When his customers began requesting cheese they had sampled in France, Jourdenais was able to meet their demand.
But the taste for cheese may also have native roots. Quebecers are near-obsessive about a substance called "daily fresh curds." Found in small plastic bags beside cash registers everywhere, these irregular nibbles of firm, fresh cheese are the dry curds used to make cheddar, sold fresh and unmolded. They're eaten as snacks with beer. Fresh curds are only good the day they are produced, during which time they require no refrigeration. Quebecers like them warm straight from the cheese press. Day-old curds must be refrigerated. They go into poutine, a local specialty of french fries and hot gravy.
Quebec's second-largest cheese producer, Fromagerie Cote, began in 1976, making daily fresh curds in the central Quebec village of Kingsey Falls. Now the largest curds producer in Quebec, Cote has also become one of the best-known makers of artisanal cheese. As massive machines churn away inside Cote's sizeable factory, workers hover over a row of small vats off to one side. Here, Cote manufactures its Du Village line of artisan-style cheeses, including their washed-rind Cantonnier. Curdled milk spills from the vats down a gentle slope into rows of cheese molds. "The art of hand-molding the cheese is replicated with machines here," says Cote's Daniel Leduc.
The soft-ripened cheeses yield a creamy texture and a slightly mature flavor, like some brie. The wash-rind Cantonnier offers the most character; it melts richly on the tongue with bright, citrusy flavors and a vaguely nutty aftertaste. Cote's cheeses are a compromise between artisanal character and large-scale production. The company has mounted a successful effort to expand into the United States, where some Whole Foods markets sell the cheeses.
Smaller in scale than Cote, Fromagerie Tournevent has a line of goat's-milk products that also maintains a significant US presence, due in large part to the efforts of John Eggena, who coordinates export marketing for the mid-sized creamery. Eggena arrived in Quebec 30 years ago via Berkeley, Calif., and Boulder, Colo. He and Tournevent owner Rene Marceau, who founded the cheese company in 1979, were part of the back-to-the-land movement in Quebec at the time, says Eggena.
Just 32 employees work in the gleaming Tournevent factory in Chesterville, in central Quebec. Here milk, trucked in from a network of area farmers, is pasteurized slowly, and some cheeses are hand-ladeled into molds. The results -- including a sharp goat's-milk cheddar, as well as traditional fresh and aged goat cheeses -- are dense, with deep, clean flavors. Making cheese by hand, says Eggena, is "less cost-effective, but if you want to have a really nice product, [that's what you do]."
In order to survive, says the ex-patriate, the business must expand, but too much growth could obscure the company's image as a moderate-scale, regionally distinct producer. Plus, local roots are valued at Tournevent. Eggena asks, "Why make everything international?"
That sentiment prevails elsewhere. The Abbaye St. Benoit-du-Lac, another cheesemaker, also wants to limit its growth. At one time it was common for Benedictine orders like this one to make cheese, in accordance with their philosophy of work and self-sufficiency. Now, the St. Benoit-du-Lac abbey is the only cheesemaking monastery remaining in Quebec.
David Stocks is one of 11 lay employees who operate the creamery alongside three monks. He's been there since 1977, when pressing curds for the handmade cheeses took six strong men armed with heavy weights and a 3/4-inch-thick sheet of metal. Now, the process is mostly mechanized. Of its 14 cheeses, three have achieved widespread recognition within Quebec -- the gruyere-style Le Moine, and two types of blue, Bleu Benedictin and Ermite. While third-party importers occasionally make the abbey cheeses available in the United States, the monks have no plans to pursue an export market, says creamery manager Father Jacques Duguay.
According to Montreal fromagerie owner Jourdenais, many regional cheesemakers are content to remain within Quebec. "Most local guys don't even want to export," he says. "They don't want to get that big." As he talks, he offers customers tastes of a cheese called Victor and Berthold. Made by one of the oldest and best-known artisanal cheesemakers in Quebec, Fromagerie du Champ a la meule, it is a raw cow's milk cheese, with a rich and mellow flavor that becomes clean and focused alongside its high acid content.
But this cheese will remain unknown beyond Quebec, Jourdenais says. "You won't find it in Vancouver and you sure won't find it in New York."
