A return to real food: cheese lovers flocking to Kap for artisanal fare.

• Author: Kelly, Lindsay
• Position: NEWS

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In 2011, while travelling in China, Francois Nadeau was dismayed to realize he couldn't find cheese--an uncommon delicacy in Asia--anywhere. It was then that he decided he would learn how to make his own so he would never have to do without it.

Five years later, Nadeau is the proprietor and head cheesemaker at Fromagerie Kapuskoise, where he and a small team of helpers are crafting artisanal cheese that rivals the quality and provenance of similar French-made products.

"They work by hand, in a very artisanal way, and it's aired like it was done traditionally in France," explained Denis Nadeau, Francois' father and the sales and marketing director of the Kapuskasing-based cheese factory.

"When you age cheese, the easiest way is to just seal it in plastic, or put paraffin on it."

But at Fromagerie Kapuskoise, the cheese is air aged, in a temperature-controlled room specially designed for the purpose, with only salt periodically rubbed on the cheese wheels to help create a crust and seal in the flavour.

Housed in a Spanish-style former private home, the cheese factory has been operational for only a year, but already cheese connoisseurs are travelling from across the North to taste one of the Fromagerie's four varieties, named for towns and landmarks in the Kapuskasing area--Mattagami, Kapuskois, Opasatika, and Missinaibi--along with the fromage en grain (or cheese curds).

After undertaking some initial training in Quebec, Francois travelled to France, where he spent close to a year in the French Alps region learning the art of cheesemaking.

The key to the flavour, Nadeau said, is that the Fromagerie uses only one source of milk, while more industrial cheeses, like the standard bricked fare one finds in grocery stores, are made using multiple sources of milk.

Kapuskasing's colder temperatures make the vegetation richer, Nadeau said, and as a result, the cows' milk has a higher protein content, which makes a more flavourful, full-bodied cheese.

"The single source, we're the only ones doing that, basically, in cow's milk," Nadeau said. "Air aging, I think we're pretty much the only ones doing that in Ontario. It's more work, but the quality of the product is higher."

Primarily, the Fromagerie sells its cheeses at locations along the stretch of the North extending between Kapuskasing and Smooth Rock Falls, but it has debuted at more southern locales.

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