Outaouais cheese lovers prove the numbers right

Tashi Farmilo

If Quebec had a provincial pastime, it might just be eating cheese. According to a new survey released in late April by Les Producteurs de lait du Quebec, the province's dairy farmers association, 97 per cent of Quebecers consume cheese, 88 per cent eat it every week, and 74 per cent eat it several times a week. Conducted by polling firm Leger, the survey found that dairy products now rank second only to maple syrup as the food product Quebecers consider most iconic to the province.

For those keeping score at home, poutine came in third.

The survey was released as part of a new campaign called Fromages d'ici, meaning local cheeses, which aims to turn what is already a deeply ingrained habit into an even more frequent one. One in four Quebecers said that if they could only eat cheese one way, it would be in a poutine. One in five said they would eat it alone, without any accompaniment at all. Two per cent of respondents said they eat it with love, happiness, and pleasure, which raises some questions but also feels entirely correct.

In the Outaouais, the numbers are particularly enthusiastic. Forty per cent of regional residents said cheese goes with everything, one of the highest rates in any part of the province.

Alain Boyer is not surprised.

"Quebec is the province that consumes the most cheese in Canada," said Boyer, founder and president of Fromagerie Montebello, the distinctive yellow and red building that anchors rue Notre-Dame in the village of the same name. "Quebecers are really cheese lovers. That's why there are so many cheese makers here, and so many fine cheeses."

Boyer knows the territory. He grew up with roots in the Outaouais, worked for years as a cheesemaker in Plaisance, and in April 2011 left his job as a plant manager to open his own fromagerie. He shared the dream with a colleague, Guy Boucher, a trained accountant who harboured the same ambition. Boucher joined him in June, and the doors opened that summer.

The timing was fortunate. The fromagerie opened about a year before the completion of Highway 50 linking Montreal to Gatineau, which brought a wave of new visitors through the Outaouais and put Montebello on the map for a great many people who had never stopped there before.

The cheeses Boyer makes carry that local history in their names. The first was the Tête à Papineau, a semi-firm cow's milk cheese named for the politician Louis-Joseph Papineau, whose family once held the seigneurie on which the fromagerie now stands. Then came La Rebellion 1837, a blue cheese named for the Patriots' uprising. Le Manchebello is made from ewe's milk and aged a full year. The Adoray, introduced on the fromagerie's fifth anniversary in 2016, is wrapped in spruce bark and named for Boyer's grandfather and father, Adorice and Raymond.

Each cheese is refined by hand three times a week. The fromagerie now employs around 20 people and has expanded into the snack bar next door, which Boyer bought in 2021 to house new production rooms and a shop with a large back terrace overlooking the Ottawa River.

Ask Boyer which cheese is his favourite and he does not hesitate.

"Blue," he said.

The attachment is described the way one might describe falling for a difficult but rewarding friendship. Not everyone takes to blue cheese at first, Boyer allows, but the experience is comparable to learning wine. It starts with something softer, and over time the palate develops, reaching naturally toward stronger, more complex flavours. Boyer was eating it just last week, with prosciutto.

"It's strong," he said. "But it's so good."

Quality, he added, is the principle the fromagerie will not bend on. "Our mission as a company is really quality. We use only quality ingredients. We make sure that everything we produce always offers the customer a quality product."

Which, if the survey is any indication, is exactly what 97 per cent of the province is looking for.