Skip to main content
sue riedl on cheese

Adèle, Angèle, Anina and Anouk are just four of the 22 sheep that cheese maker Richard Garner milks twice a day to make Tomme de Gaston, a semi-hard, raw-milk cheese made at Les Brebis sur le toit bleu, a dairy sheep farm in Oxford Mills, Ont. Mr. Garner says he distinguishes the ewes by their unique personalities. He and his wife Sylvie started out in 2001 with just two sheep but for the past four years have been able to produce all their cheese using milk from their own herd. "I think it's great to be able to control your own food chain," Mr. Garner says.

This smaller, self-sufficient style of cheese-making is typical of the fermier cheeses of the Basque region of the French Pyrenees, upon which Tomme de Gaston is based. These Basque cheeses are made from a recipe that's about 3,000 years old. The individuality of flavour is expressed by each cheese-maker's affinage technique and the terroir of their farm.

Tomme de Gaston has a mottled, tawny rind that smells of fresh earth. The interior is pale gold with a supple, smooth paste and small eyes throughout. The piquant, bright scent of horseradish root is prominent in the 90-day aged wheel. The flavour is clean and mellow, and has a gentle lactic tang with hazelnut notes at the rind. Aging five to six months is ideal, allowing flavours to further mature and become richer, buttery and more complex.

Mr. Garner was not originally a cheese-maker. He took early retirement from a career as a museum photographer in the late 1990s and he and his wife bought their farm. "I was a big bread-maker and I thought, let's try cheese-making." Mr. Garner, who, with his wife, has done a lot of travelling in France, went back to the Basque region two years ago and spent five weeks training with the local cheese-makers. He has also taken courses at the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese and through New York's artisan cheese-makers' guild. "All cheese is made the same and it is the minute variations of the process that make all the difference," he says. Half a degree rise or fall in temperature for five minutes when you heat the curd will affect the outcome, Mr. Garner says, and even how you stir the curd influences characteristics such as the texture and suppleness of the final product.

Part of his technique involves adding as little culture as possible to his milk (about 5 per cent of what is normally used) in order to let the inherent bacteria in the milk do the fermentation. He also maintains the authentic milk quality by not allowing the temperature of the milk to go beyond 37 C (the temperature of the animal it came from).

Because each wheel of Tomme de Gaston reflects the nature of the milk, its character will change as the milking season progresses. Milking takes place only from the spring to the fall and gradually the solid content of the ewe's milk becomes more concentrated. The milk has more butterfat in October than in May so the same recipe produces a richer, more buttery cheese.

As a seasonal cheese, only about 1,000 kilograms of Tomme de Gaston is produced each year. Mr. Garner says it's sold before it's made and "when it's gone, it's gone."

Sue Riedl studied at the Cordon Bleu in London.

Cheese Tomme de Gaston

Origin Oxford Mills, Ont. (about 70 kilometres from downtown Ottawa)

Producer Les Brebis sur le toit bleu dairy sheep farm

Cheese maker Richard Garner

Milk Raw sheep

Type Semi-firm, natural rind, pressed, uncooked

Shape 2-3 kilogram wheel

Distributor Brebis.ca

Note All the cheeses at Les Brebis are named after the couple's dogs.

Availability (possibly delayed until October)

Ontario

Merrickville: Mrs. McGarrigle's

Lyndhurst: Wendy's Country Market

Kingston: AquaTerra Restaubistro and Le Chien Noir

Ottawa: Domus, Frasier Café, Byward Fruit Market, The Piggy Market

Kemptville: Kemptville Kinsmen Farmers' Market

Toronto: Nancy's Cheese, Gilead Café, Thin Blue Line, Gurth Pretty (Cheese of Canada)

Follow related authors and topics

Authors and topics you follow will be added to your personal news feed in Following.

Interact with The Globe