Canadian cheese

Best Bites: The Most Memorable Cheese of 2023

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We bring the curtain down on 2023 with the help of friends in fromage recalling the most memorable cheese that crossed their palates during the past 12 months.

Check out the tasting notes and make up your shopping list for the next visit to a cheese shop or, better yet, right to the cheesemaker. If you like, you can order online for convenient home delivery.

David Beaudoin first gained popularity as the Squeaky Cheese Guy. Nowadays, he’s known as the Canadian Cheese Ambassador. Here are his picks for the most memorable cheese of the year:

L’Attrappe Cœur, La Trappe à Fromage

L’Attrappe Cœur, La Trappe à Fromage, Gatineau, Québec

This heart-shaped brie has conquered my heart and many others at weddings and gatherings. Under its velvety bloomy rind reminiscent of white mushrooms is a milky and chalky paste that keeps on “oozing” away when ripening to perfection. Mild, chalky and fresh when young, it develops beautiful aromas of mushrooms and root vegetables when ripe.

Great Plains Blue, Coteau Hills Creamery

Great Plains Blue, Coteau Hills Creamery, Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan

A young mild blue, with light blue veins throughout the cheese, creates a nice balance between earthy, mushroomy, salty and creamy. This light blue cheese made from the milk of Caroncrest Farm in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, is a great entry-level blue cheese to be discovered. Only available in Saskatchewan, and in small quantities.

Miranda, Fromagerie Fritz Kaiser

Miranda, Fromagerie Fritz Kaiser, Noyan, Québec

Le Miranda is a firm washed rind cheese with a savoury and umami flavour that still awaits to be discovered nationally. This cheese is spectacular on its own or with sweet and savoury accompaniments, and a long deep lasting flavour.

Cheese educator and cheese sommelier Vanessa Simmons says her most memorable cheese moments happen when the joy of the season is shared with good friends, family, work peers or colleagues, walking them through a memorable Canadian artisan cheese experience. Personally selected and perfectly à point, these cheeses are all uniquely special in their own way—whether award-winning, or reserve aged, rare and hard to find, or some of the last of their kind.

Here are those extraordinary cheeses:

Jackie Armet is a longtime friend in cheese who has worked with me as cheese co-ordinator at The Great Canadian Cheese Festival and then the Canadian Cheese Awards. A graduate of the Professional Fromager program at George Brown College in Toronto, Jackie lives in Prince Edward County and offers in-person tutored tastings and consulting services via Cheese Experience.

Here’s what really tickled her palate in 2023:

The Dragon’s Growl, That Dutchman’s Cheese Farm

The Dragon’s Growl, That Dutchman’s Cheese Farm, Upper Economy, Nova Scotia

It’s a creamy Gouda cheese spread made with Dragon’s Breath Blue and Old Growler Gouda.

Cow’s milk creates a subtle, creamy and rich flavour as you spread it on anything from a cracker, baguette, burger, steamed or roasted vegetables, such as cauliflower, broccoli, potatoes. Certainly takes veggies up a notch.

Fredondaine, Fromagerie La Vache à Maillotte

Fredondaine, Fromagerie La Vache à Maillotte, La Sarre, Québec

Often nicknamed the “Oka” of Abitibi, Fredondaine pleases everyone with its softness and versatility. This cow’s milk, washed rind cheese is always a good go to cheese with hints of cooked butter and slightly nutty.

STAND-OUT CHEESE OF YEARS PAST

—Georgs Kolesnikovs

Georgs Kolesnikovs, Cheese-Head-in-Chief at CheeseLover.ca, has never met a cheese he didn’t like . . . well, hardly ever. Follow him on his other adventures at On the Road, Across the Sea on Substack.

Canadian cheese, Stonetown Artisan Cheese, Wildwood

Wildwood: A true taste of the Swiss Alps

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Wildwood: A taste of the Swiss Alps produced by Stonetown Artisan Cheese in St. Marys, Ontario.

Appenzeller, which hails from the Appenzellerland region of northeast Switzerland, is often described as the tastiest of Swiss cheeses.

Wildwood, which hails from St. Marys in southwest Ontario, is certainly the tastiest of the Swiss or Alpine cheese produced by Stonetown Artisan Cheese.

“A true taste of the Swiss Alps, creamy and herbaceous, reminiscent of Appenzeller,” that’s how Wendy Furtenbacher, who looks after marketing and business development for Stonetown, describes Wildwood.

“It has a silky texture and flavours of brown butter and nuts,” says Tammy Miller, owner of Country Cheese Company in Ajax, my neighbourhood cheese shop, where I sourced the wedge shown in the video.

Me, I only have three words for Wildwood: delicious, delicious, delicious.

The cheese, named after the Wildwood Dam in St. Marys, is rich and creamy on the palate with a nice balance of salt. It’s really quite unique in taste and appearance.

Not only does Wildwood have a distinctive flavour, it also has a rustic and appealing appearance. The dark aromatic rind gives the cheese a contrasting texture to the interior and generates aromas typically associated with washed-rind cheeses.

Wildwood tastes excellent in sandwiches or on a cheese platter with fruits, dried meat and bread. It also melts well and and can used in grilled cheese sandwiches, or to make an easy cheesy quesadilla for a quick lunch.

Wildwood makes an easy cheesy quesadilla for a quick lunch.

Tammy Miller recommends serving Wildwood with a cherry jam like Provisions Montmorency Cherry and Merlot Wine Jam.

Wildwood pairs well with red wine.

Aged 12 months. Ingredients: Unpasteurized milk, salt, rennet, bacterial culture.

Wildwood has won many awards, most recently being named Grand Champion at the 2023 SIAL International Cheese Competition.

Cheesemakers Jolanda and Hans Weber came to Canada in 1996 from their native Switzerland, with three children in tow, to begin a new life in St. Marys on their own dairy farm.

“Having previously worked in the Swiss Alps, it was always our dream to produce delicious, high quality cheese reminiscent of the renowned Swiss mountains and made from our own milk,” the Webers explain. “With a profound commitment to creating cheese of the highest quality, and the support of our family, as well as Ramon Eberle, a Master Cheesemaker from Switzerland, our humble dream became a reality.”

Fresh milk comes from 250 Holstein cows—who sleep on beach sand all year round. Two sons, together with their families, look after the cows while Jolanda and Hans handcraft the farmstead cheese: “In order to obtain a great taste, the milk is unpasteurized and has no additives. This ensures the cheese is pure and natural.”

The milk is thermized, which means its heated to reduce spoilage bacteria with minimum collateral heat damage to milk components. Artisan cheesemakers prefer thermization to pasteurization as the former does not cause changes in flavour.

Wendy Furtenbacher Madonna, a certified cheese professional widely known in a cheese circles as Curdy Girl, regularly samples Stonetown cheeses in Toronto-area supermarkets and cheese shops. Next week she’ll be sampling at Queensway Sobeys and the following week at Todmorden Sobeys, followed by Pantry Fine Cheese on Gerrard Street in Toronto. Details are generally posted on her Facebook page.

She also represents Mountainoak Cheese of New Hamburg, Ontario.

—Georgs Kolesnikovs

Georgs Kolesnikovs, Cheese-Head-in-Chief at CheeseLover.ca, has never met a cheese he didn’t like . . . well, hardly ever. Follow him on his adventures at On the Road, Across the Sea on Substack.

 

 

 

Advent Calendar, Canadian cheese

Finally, a Canadian cheese calendar for Advent!

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It’s about time!

So good to see Progressive Dairy Canada magazine produce an Advent calendar featuring Canadian cheese.

Really good to see excellent representation of cheesemakers from Vancouver Island to Newfoundland although we will quibble that many outstanding Québec cheeses are missing. Maybe next year we’ll have to develop an Advent calendar of our own.

But, for now, kudos to Progressive Dairy Canada!