It’s time for Ontario to have a designated taste trail to spotlight the close to 50 producers of excellent cheese made in the province. Click here for an interactive map providing an overview of cheesemakers in Ontario.
Quebec has long had taste trail to showcase its cheesemakers, recently producing an app for mobile phones to help you navigate the 15 cheese regions of La Belle Province. Click here to access the app, currently available only in French.
Oxford County in Southwestern Ontario has shown what can be done locally to promote its cheesemakers and other artisan food producers, gourmet shops and eateries. Click here to access the Oxford County Cheese Trail, a self-guided tour of 24 stops, including three cheese producers.
We see Cheese Lover’s Guide to Ontario as a mouth-watering guide in print and on the Web:
- Who are the cheesemakers in Ontario
- Where are they located
- What are the tasty cheeses they produce
Plus:
- History of cheesemaking in Ontario
- All about milk in Ontario
- —Cow
- —Goat
- —Sheep
- —Water Buffalo
- How milk is turned into cheese
- Cheese-tasting demystified
- Pairing cheese with wine and beer
- Cooking with cheese
We plan to create maps dividing the province into four regions:
- Ontario East
- Ontario Southwest
- Ontario Golden Horseshoe
- Ontario North.
With suggested itineraries for weekend and longer road trips. We’ll include cheese shops and gourmet food retailers, bakers and charcuterie makers, wineries, breweries and distillers.
If you’d like to help make the Ontario Cheese Taste Trail happen, please get in touch. Email trail@cheeselover.ca or leave a comment below.
For our part, we’ll reach out to cheese producers—There are 46 on our map above—to begin building a database of information about cheeses produced, type of milk used, the personnel involved, history of the business, whether tours are offered, whether there is a retail store on the premises, and so on.
This is quite an undertaking so don’t expect to see the finished product for a while.
—Georgs Kolesnikovs
Georgs Kolesnikovs, Cheese-Head-in-Chief at CheeseLover.ca, drafted the original outline for an Ontario cheese trail way back in 2010, so this has been a long time coming.
