Craving more bleu

Former sheep farmer New Zealander Alistair MacKenzie moved to Canada 11 years ago with his French-Canadian wife, Karien Piché and made a career change, purchasing a small artisan cheese-making and sheep farming business called Fromagerie la Moutonnière in Ste-Hélène de Chester, Quebec. Until recently the two were making up to 1,kg of cheese out of Giroux’s basement. In 29, having outgrown their entrepreneurial roots, they finally opened a full-scale cheese plant. MacKenzie, who has an agricultural degree, says that in New Zealand (which has about 4 million sheep) dairy sheep farming is just catching on. Sue Riedl, who studied at London’s Cordon Bleu, describes the couple’s bleu for The Globe and Mail: “Visually this is a beauty for the cheese board. Like its fragrant ‘nose’ it delivers big flavour, nicely rounded and not sharp. Wonderfully salty but well balanced, you immediately crave more.”