09/04/09: Interview with a cheesemaker.

The Millbank building was originally owned by Parmalat, but was sold to a group of Mennonite families (for $475000) when the company went under in ____. The group put another $400000 into it and the leased it out, first to another group of Mennonite families (Mornington Dairy, sold 95% of their goat milk to Liberte, but recently lost the contract) and then also to Montforte Dairy, in 2004.

All of Montforte’s milk starts at the farm, goes to Guelph to a milk grader for testing, and then is transported by truck to the Dairy in Millbank. They drive into the giant garage-style doors into a fully enclosed concrete dock where they are hooked up the hoses that pump the milk through pipes to the pasteurizer (HTST – High Temperature, Short Time – 15 seconds at 163C). The receiving bays for the trucks have to be carefully designed to prevent exposing the milk to contaminants from outdoors. They cost about $150000 to install – a lot of money for a small, artisanal cheese company – so, in Montforte’s new building in Stratford, they have adopted a new way of receiving and pumping out the milk trucks: the trucks back up to the building and are carefully sealed off before pumping. This keeps the contaminants from even entering the building, saves them from having to pay for the giant doors, and takes up much less interior space otherwise used to house the trucks.

The milk is processed and kept at 22C until ready to go into storage. French cheeses typically need to go into a drying room. The milk is stored at 0C, while the cut/packed/fresh cheeses are stored at 4C. There is a lot of wasted product when the cheese has to be cut into specific weights to be packed and sold at stores. The ends, though they could easily be grated and sold as a prepared product, are usually throw away. Other cheeses are aged at a carefully monitored 10C with 90% humidity, with a complete change of air in the room three times per day to ensure that the ammonia in the environment does not sit at the ground.

Ruth Klahsen grew up in a Russian Mennonite family with a doctor for a father. At eh age of 19, she was shunned and after leaving home, promptly got herself pregnant. Her son is now 30 years old. She had another child a couple of years later and moved to Woodstock, Ontario, but still hadn’t decided what she wanted to do for a career. There was very little work in the early 1980s and unemployment in that town was at 50%. She joined WINTO (___) and got work in London. Having no money for a car, she hitchhiked to and from work every day.

She decided that she wanted to become a cook, inspired by her Oma’s skills in the kitchen) and enrolled in the Stratford Chef school in 1983, its inaugural year. She trained and worked as a top chef in Stratford for the next 20 years, and was employed as the chef at the Stratford Festival for much of that time.

In 2003, Ruth decided she needed a change from cooking. She joined forces with a man by the name of Sebastien Montforte, who had 27 years experience in the cheese industry. They had worked together for less than a year when Sebastien, voicing his frustrations and spewing derogatory names at Ruth, left the business. Shortly thereafter, it was discovered that all of the cheese they had made that first year had been contaminated by raw milk, and they lost $160000 worth of product – much of the $250000 Ruth had raised to start up the company.

Thankfully, fortunes have changed considerably since that first year: sales have doubled every year. Last year Montforte sold a million dollars worth of cheese with a 15% profit share. Their reputation has spread mostly by word of mouth, and sales are expected to continue to grow – hence the new building in Stratford. Montforte’s business model will see their sales capped at $5 million to ensure that they stick to their roots as a quality-based, small-scale operation.

They will continue to expand, however, the types of products they craft, now using four kinds of milk (cow, sheep, goat, and water buffalo) and soon selling a selection of charcuterie.