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Since its opening two years ago, Véronique Commend's Jean-Talon market cheese shop has become a popular destination for foodies looking to stock their kitchens with award-winning Quebec cheeses.

Now, some are adding a new product to their baskets: butter.

Long overlooked by Quebec gourmets, butter is being transformed from a kitchen staple into Quebec's latest delicacy.

A handful of dairy farmers around the province are starting to offer butters made from fresh milk produced in small batches on their farms. Instead of commercial feeds, these producers offer their cows tasty mixes of hay, buckwheat and oats. They pasteurize at lower temperatures to preserve herbaceous hints in the milk and fullness in the cream.

The resulting butter is creamier and sweeter than the version available in supermarkets. "Tasting it is a really rich experience," says Ms. Commend. "You sense the cream on your tongue, not the salt or the grease."

Quebec's nascent artisanal butter scene is where cheese was 15 years ago, when no one believed local products could rival European imports, says Gilles Jourdenais, owner of Fromagerie Atwater, Canada's largest cheese wholesaler.

"Butter is our next fighting battle," he says. Mr. Jourdenais' butter selection includes a tangy whey butter from Fromagerie P'tits Plaisirs, based in the Eastern Townships, and an herbed butter from the Beurrerie Lino, in Quebec City.

"We are at a turning point where our cheese makers in Quebec are financially secure enough to try new products."

Mr. Jourdenais wants Quebec to look to France, where hundreds of butters are produced with tastes varying according to region, and "you don't have to bother putting jam on your baguette in the morning." Some are cultured or flavoured with sea salt.

In Quebec, there are fewer varieties of specialty butters, with most makers sticking to the traditional staples of salted, semi-salted and unsalted. A few producers add herbs and garlic.

Despite the products' growing popularity, Quebec producers still face hurdles in getting them to consumers. Interprovincial trade barriers prevent most small dairies from selling their products outside Quebec.

Canadian law restricts producers from serving raw milk butters, so they are required to pasteurize the milk. In France, consumers can buy raw milk butters, some of which are almost entirely composed of fat.

The small scale of the artisanal producers is also a challenge. Veteran chef Anne Desjardins savours the artisan butters at home but does not use them in her restaurant, L'Eau à la Bouche, in the Laurentians. The producers are too small to guarantee regular delivery in the quantities she requires, she says.

Still, sensing an increased demand for artisanal products, Diane Groleau, co-owner of the Beurrerie du Patrimoine near Sherbrooke, decided to focus on butter three years ago when her three sons, all in their early 20s, told her they wanted to remain on the farm.

Previously, she had only produced raw milk, which she sold to large producers to be processed.

Now, every morning, her sons milk the cows and, at a facility on the farm, the milk is separated to transform the raw product, at almost 4 per cent fat, into various levels of skim.

The process also produces cream, at almost 50 per cent fat. (It takes 15 litres of milk to produce a single litre of cream.) Every second day the cream is briefly pasteurized and immediately churned, agitating the structure of the fat molecules so they bind together.

The resulting butter is 88 per cent fat, slightly higher than commercial varieties, which hover around the 80 per cent legal minimum.

The Groleau family's products have become great sellers for vendors such as Ms. Commend, who retails Groleau butter for $5.99 a pound, or about $1.50 more than supermarket varieties at her shop, Qui Lait Cru!?!. The Beurrerie du Patrimoine also produces non-homogenized milk, cottage cheese and cheddar.

The Beurrerie du Patrimoine's process allows the Groleaus to influence the taste of the butter by selecting the cows' feed and pasturing conditions. Churning the butter so quickly after milking the cow enhances flavour, they say.

Large producers turn milk into butter much the same way the small ones do - separating the cream from the milk - but because they operate in large quantities, the raw milk used has travelled several days before being processed.

A stabilizer may also be added to stave off any acidity in the milk, which artisanal producers say can affect flavour.

While Quebec butters are not widely available outside the province because the makers lack the license for interprovincial trade, word is already spreading about the products.

Cole Snell, owner of Provincial Fine Foods, a Toronto-based specialty food distributor, travels to Montreal to hunt for hot products and bought some Groleau butter for his own kitchen.

"I would love for someone in Ontario to make an artisanal butter," he says.

The exception is a butter from Fromagerie L'Ancêtre, an organic dairy near Trois-Rivières, where the butter is coloured golden by the chlorophyll in the grass eaten by the cows. The federally licensed plant distributes its products to health-oriented grocery stores across Canada.

The butter is churned in small batches, says André Blanchette, Fromagerie L'Ancêtre manager, a process he likens to preparing fine cheeses.

"We have to approach butter with the same old-fashioned methods," he says. "You cannot get the same taste from a fully automated plant."