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By Adam Waxman
A taste of place in Eastern Townships is probably the easiest craving to satisfy. It is a veritable buffet of fromageries; boulangeries; micro-breweries and wineries. Its Route des Vins is home to 60 per cent of Quebec’s wine. It’s the perfect romantic wine and cheese getaway amidst secluded spas in lush countryside.
Lunch at Chardo restaurant and wine bar in Bromont is artful decadence as we indulge in duck tartare in a broth with oat, soy and mirin. A vibrant carrot risotto with ricotta and honey mushrooms has sublime texture, and Guineafowl with eggplant, honey oat and mint is the triumph of a kitchen with versatile flavour-forward imagination.
La Memphré in Magog is a popular micro-brasserie where we comfortably linger on the veranda overlooking the water with sumptuous duck drumsticks lacquered in a stout barbecue sauce, and a poutine of crunchy fries lavished in a sharp, slightly sweet blue cheese and crowned with a savoury duck confit. What could be better than to pair this with a flight of local craft beer and laze away the afternoon?
Not only is Hôtel Château Bromont the most convenient and congenial hotel in the area, it is also popular for its 4 Canards restaurant where, at the base of the mountain, we dine on a luxurious pressed foie gras with quince marmalade and fleur de sel, and duck prepared two ways: as a tender, succulent breast and as a crisp cromesquis which we lavish with apple butter.
Les Fromages
It’s been said that “sweet dreams are made of cheese.” Who am I to disagree? One cannot visit Quebec without a taste. Quebec’s very first cheese factory opened in the Eastern Townships in 1865. Today, the Cheesemakers Circuit is the best route to savouring the region.
Fromagerie Nouvelle-France focuses mainly on sheep’s milk for its mild, soft qualities, and raise their own sheep. Their Zacharie Cloutier won Best Cheese in Quebec in 2023. It is named for a French carpenter who immigrated to New France in the 1600s, and from whom the cheese maker is descendent. Firm, with a washed rind, it is produced from unpasteurized sheep’s milk, and has sweet notes of butter and caramel. La Madelaine is a Brie style cheese that has a soft bloomy rind and a creamy mouthfeel. This, too, is named for an ancestor of the cheese maker from the 1600s. Another Brie, the Brie Paysan, is so luxuriously buttery, it is sublime! Another sheep’s milk cheese is Samuel Le Bleu. It’s a beautiful blue cheese that is soft, fresh, not too aggressive, and won Best Blue Cheese at the 2024 Royal Agricultural Winter Fair. More than a cheese boutique, this shop purveys specialty products from the region including local beer, wine and jelly. From the kitchen we’re seduced by the aroma of a crusty grilled cheese sandwich being freshly made, and so we sit and gleefully devour it.
Located close to the Vermont border, Fromagerie La Station maintains 600 acres of land, 400 of which are for organic farming, including organic milk production from their own Holstein cows to produce their organic cheese. Firm and semi soft cheeses ripen on boards of local spruce to absorb moisture and enable greater oxygen flow.
Chemin du Brûlé is a semi-hard farmhouse cheese with a line of vegetable ash in the center of its paste. Soft and smooth, it tastes of butter and hazelnut, while its rind elicits mild fruity, mushroomy aromatics. Inside the copper-coloured washed-rind of the Raclette de Compton au poivre is a semi-soft melty cheese with notes of butter and chestnut. It is punctuated by organic pink peppercorns that produce a mild heat and a more dynamic flavour profile. I particularly enjoy the Chemin Hatley, ripened between three to eight months on the spruce boards, and yielding floral and nutty aromatics. These are all delicious cheeses and we trust their quality. The specialty food shop here is chock full of sophisticated items that I would love in my own pantry. The maple syrup, for example, from their own grove, is ambrosial.
Our visit to Abbaye Saint-Benoit-du-Lac begins with learning about daily monastic life. This towering monastery overlooking Lake Memphremagog was built by Benedictine monks from France in 1912. We admire the geometric forms and multicoloured bricks and granite. It’s quiet in the sanctuary, and I would not expect there to be a dairy nearby but, in 1943, the monks decided to use up the extra milk from their dairy cows to produce cheese.
Today they craft twelve varieties of cheese from which they produce 300,000kg annually. They also maintain an apple orchard of 3,500 apple trees, yielding 20 varieties of apples to make apple sauce, apple butter, apple cider vinegar, and three types of apple cider: Brut, half-dry, and Kir Abbatial. When in season, we can even pick our own apples here.
In the gift shop, we make our selection of purchases, and sit in a pastoral field outside to enjoy them. Bleu Bénédictin is creamy Roquefort style cheese, and Ermite, an original cheese from the monastery, and the first one the monks ever made, is another creamy blue cheese but with a more earthy, mushroomy essence. There is a range of styles from the Italian Fontina and Smoked Fontina to the mild Swiss Mont Saint-Benoît with a subtle nutty flavour. Our favourite is the Frère Jacques, a firm cheese with an essence of hazelnut, and similar to a Gruyere. This is not a typical dairy experience, it feels cloistered, and yet sitting in the grass by the monastery, eating cheese, we feel absolutely transported to another place, another time.
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