Fromagerie des Trois Rapides
I’m browsing the displays of specialty foods at Fromagerie des Trois Rapides (FTR) on County Road 17 in Hawkesbury waiting for owner Alain Ménard to transit from his other business, The Green Beaver, a few minutes away.
The well-established Green Beaver brand, which he started with his wife 23 years ago, sells personal care products such as aluminum-free deodorant, toothpaste and sunscreen found in health-food stores, grocery stores and at pharmacies.
It’s a business model and a customer reach that Ménard would like to eventually replicate for FTR where the unique condiments, foie gras, chocolate, and spreads and preserves I survey are the foreground to the main event at the business, an “affinage” room where the cheeses quietly sit.
Affinage is a key period of time during which cheeses mature and age – and thereby gain their distinctive flavours, aromas and textures.
“A lot of fresh cheese doesn’t really taste like much. It’s only after aging that it does,” says Ménard.
I happen to consider cheese one of my personal care products: it’s a regular purchase for me and satisfies both body and soul. The savoury morsel is what American literary critic Clifton Fadiman called “milk’s leap toward immortality.”
Cheese is, in fact, “alive” as it changes and evolves: making a high-quality soft, semi-soft or hard cheese requires controlling and shaping live microscopic organisms in their environment.
Ménard is a subject-matter expert when it comes to microbes and uniquely suited to understanding how they play a role in cheese-making having graduated with a degree in microbiology from the Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at McGill University.
“I took a lot of food microbiology courses because as an 18-year-old I guess I was interested in fermenting stuff,” Ménard says with a smile. “When you talk about food microbiology, it’s when you use bacteria and yeast to make food. I learned the basics of making cheese.”
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