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Artisan cheesemaker:
The artisan cheesemaker is a creator who, from fermentation to maturation, imagines and refines fine cheeses often inspired by the “terroir”.
Video transcript
My name is Fritz Kaiser. I’m president of the Kaiser cheese factory. I started the cheese factory when I was 21. My wife and I started on our own, and now we have 20 employees. I did my apprenticeship as a dairyman in Switzerland, which lasted 4 years, then my family migrated to Canada, and I said okay, I’ll follow. And then I saw that there was a market for special cheeses.
The story of La Tomme de Monsieur Seguin (Mr Seguin’s goat), we attached the name to Monsieur Seguin’s goat, because it’s well known and also for people, at least to get closer to something they already know.
Goat’s milk was mixed with cow’s milk to soften the taste of goat’s milk. The cheese style is semi-firm with a washed rind. Maturation takes place on wooden boards, which are washed with a special culture.
The word Tomme stands for a 2 kg round wheel of cheese. On the nose, it’s slightly woody, which is what you find in cheese ripening rooms, washed and rubbed for over 6 weeks. On the palate, it’s a lovely, supple cheese, with a roasted almond finish because it’s a goat’s cheese, a blend of 50% cow’s milk and 50% goat’s milk.
When we started just 2 persons, it was my wife and me. We made maybe 20kg a day starting just the weekend and then gradually got bigger and bigger. It was really, really really handmade in those days.
It’s a love story because from the start, my wife has been with me, and even today, she prefers to be involved only in production, instead of sitting in an office. It’s really, even the two of us will have our arms in the cheese, in the milk, then we mix and we love it because that’s what we want to do, that’s what we love.
You have to be passionate about it, and then you have to have patience, because it doesn’t just happen from one year to the next. You also have to have the stamina to keep going when things go wrong, and then that’s it, it’s the love for the job. Just for the art of making cheese, that’s what keeps me going, to do something, even create something else.
