This certainly isn’t your run-of-the-mill advertisement for cheese!
Fifth Town Artisan Cheese has been running ads in Edible Toronto magazine that are safe to describe as offbeat. Double-click the ad shown for an enlarged view.
Petra Kassun-Mutch, founder and president of Fifth Town in Ontario’s Prince Edward County, explains: “The goal was to position artisan cheese as part of an active, healthy, conscientious, and engaged lifestyle. Not just a treat for hard-core foodies or for wine and cheese parties . . . and not just for connoisseurs. (We want to appeal to) skateboarders, Harley riders, the gay community, everyone. We also want to attract the younger set to artisan cheeses.”
The design firm that produces the ads—See them all here—is Scout Design of Picton, owner Rene Dick. The illustrator is Carl Wiens, the copy writer, Anna Winthrow.
Petra says the other purpose of the ads is to be a good artisan-cheese industry citizen by promoting the industry as well as Fifth Town: “That is why you see all the links and bookmarks at the bottom. You will note are promoting artisan cheese in general. Part of the philosophy to do well by doing good. Our own logo is a very small part of ad.”
The Locavorius Caseophile ad campaign was one of three finalists in the Best Ad or Ad Campaign category at the Edible Publications Conference and Awards Banquet held in California recently for the 60 publications in the Edible magazine family.
You can provide feedback about the ads and the ever-growing family of Fifth Town cheeses by completing the .
Lori Legacey, cheesemaker at Mariposa Dairy, has a sniff of a 19-kilo wheel of cheddar. The dairy's Lindsay Bandage Cheddar beat out 40 other goat-milk cheeses in the British Empire Cheese Competition. Photo by Lisa Gervais/The Lindsay Post.
Petra Cooper, founder and president of Fifth Town Artisan Cheese, accepts Corporate Social Responsibility recognition from Lloyd Hipel, project manager, Enviro-Stewards.
For a woman dedicated to artisan cheesemaking—who famously chucked a high-level career in publishing to pursue her passion for cheese, it must have been a particularly sweet moment to learn that her tiny creamery beat out giant Kraft Canada for a prestigious national award.
Petra Cooper of Fifth Town Artisan Cheese was honored at a gala event hosted by Guelph Food Technology Centre (GFTC) to celebrate leadership in sustainability among food and beverage processing facilities.
The November 4 event signalled the release of key findings from a GFTC research project, “Raising the Bar for Sustainability Performance in Ontario’s Food and Beverage Processing Industry.”
Fifth Town Artisan Cheese, located in Ontario’s Prince Edward County, won the recognition plaque for the most prestigious overall category, Corporate Social Responsibility. Cher Mereweather, director of GFTC’s sustainability consulting business unit, says what makes the win so impressive is that a small facility has been able to excel at incorporating sustainability.
“With fewer than 20 employees, Fifth Town Artisan Cheese Co. demonstrated that corporate social responsibility can be done well at any size,” says Mereweather.
Other facilities that were nominated in this category were Kraft Canada Inc. in Scarborough, Ontario; Hiram Walker and Sons Ltd. in Windsor, Ontario; and Cargill Value Added Meats – Foodservice Canada in London, Ontario.
Guelph Food Technology Centre is a world leader in food industry solutions, helping companies along the entire food value chain compete globally by strengthening the very foundations of their business: their products, processes and people. Each year, GFTC assists more than 1,500 companies, providing confidential services in food safety and quality consulting and auditing, training, product development, packaging, labeling and sustainability.
Thus, it came to pass that we had one champion and five winners spread out before us on Friday, as you can see in the photo. We would have liked more champions but only Oka L’Artisan was available at St. Lawrence Market.
You’ll note the lack of wine glasses. After all, it was a working lunch. Just cheese, with sides of charcuterie, walnuts, grapes, bread, and, in the front right, Bleu d’Auvergne from France for dessert.
Here’s how the three of us informally ranked the award-winning Canadian cheese we tasted:
Outstanding! If this what a cheddar that wasn’t even entered tastes like, we cannot wait to get our hands on Perron’s Doyen, Grand Champion, and 120th Anniverdsary Reserve, Reserve Champion.
Fromagerie Perron definitely will be on our list of cheesemakers to visit when we next travel on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec. Fromagerie Perron is located on Lac Saint Jean in the Saguenay region.
It didn’t take us long to consume the entire small wheel of Champfleury. We loved the fruity creaminess of this washed-rind soft cheese but were stunned afterward to read on the label that modified milk ingredients (MMI) are used in making the cheese.
Champfleury is marketed as an “authentic fine cheese” in the Agropur Signature collection. Hmmm . . .
No longer made by Trappist monks but still one of Canada’s most recognizable and noteworthy cheeses. Agropur cheesemakers make the cheese in the former Cistercian abbey. Whether the recipe is the original is arguable.
Fromagerie Perron produces the 2010 Grand and Reserve Champions of cheddars in Canada.
Here are the winners in the cheese competition at Royal Agricultural Winter Fair which runs in Toronto this week until Sunday.
Agropur and Parmalat, Canada’s two giant cheese producers, dominated the results with six wins apiece but relatively tiny Fifth Town Artisan Cheese and Glengarry Fine Cheese, with five and three wins each, garnered more than their share of honours.
Fromagerie Perron dominated the cheddar cheese judging. Quality Cheese had four wins including a first for its new Water Buffalo Mozzarella.
VARIETY CHEESE – 95 entries – Judges: Thierry Martin and Jean-Jacques Turgeon
HARD – PARMESAN, GANA, ROMANO, ETC ~ 1st – Extra Aged Lankaaster ~ Glengarry Fine Cheese ~ Wilma Klein Swormink, Marie-Benedicte Pretty, Margaret Peters-Morris, cheesemakers
Giuseppe Garsito: Buratta and Buffalo Mozzarella cheesemaker at Quality Cheese.
A 90-minute nap was in order after three hours of grazing at the fourth annual Slow Food/Evergreen Picnic at Brick Works in Toronto today. A capacity crowd of 1,200 sampled the best of Ontario’s sustainable harvest as presented by top chefs and leading producers, supported by a bevy of winemakers, craft brewers and producers of fruit wine and hard cider.
Here’s how the Brick Works Picnic works: A chef, such as Giacomo Pasquini of Vertical Restaurant creates a dish—Tortello, in this example—using fresh ingredients from Bzikot-family run Best Baa Farm—sheep’s milk ricotta and a brebis frais filling—with a light lamb jus and vegetables—dried organic veggies and live kale sprouts—grown by Pfenning family-run Pfenning’s Organic Farm.
The tortello is served in a simple presentation mere seconds after it is made by the chef’s crew in one of 66—Yes, 66!—food stations spread through the renovated Brick Works, a singular cultural showcase devoted to urban sustainability and green living.
Monforte Dairy provided the Toscano cheese that was at the heart of the savoury thyme pound cake created by Table 17.
Fifth Town Artisan Cheese was the only cheesemaker with a display of its own. Petra Cooper (at left) spread the gospel while Ezra Title of Chez Vous presented double-baked fingerlings made with double-smoked bacon and three Fifth Town cheeses, Cape Vessey, Chevre and Plain Jane.
At the Cheese Boutique display, Afrim Pristine was kept busy cutting a 10-year-old cheddar that the cheese shop purchased from historic Forfar Dairy before it churned its last curds in 2008.
But cheese played only a small role in the event overall as some of the best cooks in Ontario showed their mastery of a wide variety of agricultural products from close to home. Among the many stand-outs:
Big winners at ACS: Alastair MacKenzie and Lucille Giroux of La Moutonnière of Ste-Hélène de Chester, Quebec.
Eighteen Canadian cheeses were honoured at this year’s American Cheese Society Judging and Competition held in Seattle on the weekend. It’s the largest cheese competition in the Americas with 225 producers from 34 U.S. states, Canada and Mexico delivering a record 1,462 cheeses and cultured dairy products for judging.
Fifteen of the winners are Quebec cheeses, two are British Columbia (Kootenay Alpine Cheese), and one is Ontario (Fifth Town Artisan Cheese). La Moutonnière won four times, the most wins for a single cheesemaker from Canada.
For Wayne and Denise Harris, Kootenay Alpine Cheese is family operation—from soil management to the finished award-winning product—with daughters Nadine and Erin. Photo by Imageobcura Nelson BC.
Stephanie Diamant is the veteran cheesemaker at Fifth Town Artisan Cheese in Prince Edward County, Ontario.
Unlike other cheese competitions, where cheeses are graded down for technical defects, the American Cheese Society’s goal is to give positive recognition to those cheeses that are of the highest quality in their aesthetic evaluation (i.e. flavor, aroma, and texture), as well as their technical evaluation. As a result, the highest quality cheeses are those that the Society feels deserve the recognition of an American Cheese Society award, based on a minimum number of points awarded (totaling 100 points possible) for First, Second, or Third Place. In categories, or subcategories, where the minimum number of points is not earned, no awards are given.
The Big Cheese at Chesterfields, photographed by the Blackberry Queen aka @CreativeKarinD aka Karin Desveaux-Potters.
Beyond eating cheese straight, I cannot decide which cheese dish I prefer: a grilled-cheese sannich or poutine?
These deep thoughts come to me as I get ready to take my first big bite of the Big Cheese, the grilled-cheese sandwich served at Chesterfields Homegrown Cafe in Picton, in Ontario’s Prince Edward County. Graham Sayers, who owns and operates the funky joint with his wife, Vicky, creates the Big Cheese with three local cheeses, Black River Old Cheddar, Black River Horseradish Mozzarella and Fifth Town Chevre. Grilled on whole grain bread with a pickle on the side, it’s a winner.
Spending an evening tasting and discussing Ontario artisan cheeses under the guidance of a passionate professional is a wonderfully indulgent experience. Adding expertly paired VQA Ontario wines to the mix only serves to increase the decadence of the experience.
Sherinne Quartermaine talks wine at Culinarium.
Culinarium hosted an evening of wine and cheese tasting last week that adhered to the Toronto gourmet food shop’s mantra “All Ontario, all the time.” Kathleen Mackintosh, founder of Culinarium, chose the evening’s cheeses, and she guided the eight eager students in attendance through the process of cheese tasting.
The Wine Rack provided the VQA wines, and Sherinne Quartermaine, the store’s manager, selected a variety of Ontario wines to pair with Kathleen’s four cheese choices. Both Kathleen and Sherinne gave their students general guidelines for tasting cheese and wine, but ultimately, they agreed tasting is a personal experience. They encouraged everyone to approach tasting in whatever way worked for them.
We started each pairing by tasting the cheese on its own, then the wine on its own. We discussed the flavours and characteristics of each, and then we tasted the cheese and wine together. First, we had a bite of the cheese followed by a sip of the wine, and we noted the ways in which the flavours changed, became more apparent, or were lost with the pairing. We then reversed the steps, tasting the wine first and then the cheese.
The first cheese we sampled was a sheep’s milk cheese produced by Fifth Town Artisan Cheese in Prince Edward County near Picton, Ontario. The cheese, Lemon Fetish, was a firm, dry, feta-style cheese with citrus flavours.
Lemon Fetish was paired with Strut Sauvignon Blanc. When the cheese was sampled first, followed by the wine, the sauvignon blanc mellowed out the strong citrus flavours in the cheese, while the saltiness of Lemon Fetish made the Strut wine taste sweeter.
Kathleen Mackintosh talks cheese.
The tasting group as a whole agreed that when the approach was reversed, and the wine was followed by the cheese, the subtleties of the wine were lost to the strong flavours of the cheese. This was the case for most of the combinations sampled that evening, with the exception of the second pairing, which featured a bold Inniskillin Two Vineyards Merlot. The merlot was paired with a sharp 5-year cheddar produced by Maple Dale Cheese. The two paired nicely as neither overpowered the other.
During the evening’s tasting, the passion of both Kathleen and Sherinne for the craft of Ontario’s cheese and wine producers became apparent. Kathleen explained the human quality of artisan cheesemaking, describing it as a “hand-touched” and “human-tended” craft that required patience and care on the part of the cheesemaker.
Kathleen insisted this handcraft deserved the respect of the taster.
She argued that a taster should never ignore the rind of a cheese. As the only part of the cheese the maker can really affect, Kathleen believes we should taste the rind of every cheese we buy, out of respect for the cheesemaker.
We all gamely tried the rind of the Comfort Cream Camembert made by Upper Canada Cheese in the Niagara Peninsula. The bloomy rind added another dimension to the nutty flavours of this cheese. It was paired with a Jackson Triggs Reserve Cuvee Close, and they worked well together. The cheese made the wine taste creamier and sweeter.
Sherinne told the group of tasters the price of a wine is often a reflection of the care a grape receives. For that reason, she explained, ice wines are often pricier than other varieties. She described the labour of ice-wine making, in which pickers hand pick the frozen grapes in the middle of the night, in temperatures below minus 8 degrees Celsius.
In the case of Inniskillin Vidal Ice Wine, the hard work certainly paid off. The 2006 vintage we sampled is a multiple gold medal winner, and an older vintage of Inniskillin’s Vidal ice wine was served to President Barack Obama at his Nobel Peace Prize Dinner.
The ice wine was paired with Glengarry Fine Cheese’s Celtic Blue. The two paired nicely. While on its own, the ice wine was a bit syrupy and sweet for my liking (with a sugar code of 24), when paired with the sharp, tangy blue, I appreciated the sweetness of the ice wine.
Fifth Town's Lemon Fetish.
When our four pairings had all gone down, and our taste buds were thoroughly satisfied, the night began to wind down. My tasting companion and I lingered in the store a bit longer, admiring the cheese selection. We finally took advantage of the 10 per cent discount offered to the guests, and picked up Fifth Town’s Lemon Fetish.
Perhaps we will be inspired to experiment with some wine pairings of our own.
Petra Cooper (left) and Jean McCormack among the Holsteins at Quinte Crest Farm.
Only 20 months after Fifth Town Artisan Cheese first began producing cheese, Petra Cooper, founder and president, isn’t resting on the laurels of critical acclaim that greeted her goat and sheep cheeses. Since late December, cow’s milk is also being turned into cheese at the Prince Edward County creamery—with the first offerings going on sale in May.
Quinte Crest Tomme is the new cheese crafted by Stephanie Diamant, Fifth Town’s master cheesemaker. It will be somewhat similar to Lighthall Tomme, Fifth Town’s award-winning goat cheese. (Click here to learn what makes a tomme a tomme.)
Quinte Crest Tomme takes its name from Quinte Crest Farm—just a few minutes northwest of Fifth Town—where grass is turned into milk by a herd of 30 happy Holsteins under the care of Jean McCormack, one of Ontario’s few female dairy farmers. Jean and Petra are near neighbours as the farm is just a few minutes northwest of the creamery.
Quinte Crest is a single-herd cheese that is aged for three to six months in the underground cave at Fifth Town under the care of affineur Phil Collman (who happens to be married to the cheesemaker).
Not content with just one cow’s-milk cheese, Petra has her team at Fifth Town developing a second. It will be called Rose Haus. Ten percent of net sales will be donated to Rose House Museum which chronicles life in North Marysburgh (originally known as Fifth Town) from the 19th century to the present.
Rose Haus, once approved by government agencies, and Quinte Crest Tomme will initially be sold from Fifth Town’s store at the creamery 15 minutes beyond Picton in Prince Edward County.
Fifth Town Artisan Cheese Company bills itself as a “contemporary, environmentally and socially responsible enterprise positioned as a niche producer of fine handmade goat and sheep milk cheese.”
All of Fifth Town’s goat cheeses are made with Prince Edward County milk that is Local Food Plus certified. The cheeses are aged by time honoured artisanal methods in Ontario’s only subterranean aging facility. Fifth Town is a Platinum LEED certified dairy and won the Premier’s Award for Agri-Food Innovation in May 2009. Fifth Town opened in June 2008 as a federally licensed dairy. Currently, it employs 14 people and buys milk from three local, family-owned goat farms and three local, family-owned sheep farms. More than 80 percent of the milk processed by Fifth Town is goat milk.
This certainly isn’t your run-of-the-mill advertisement for cheese!
