Last week, Andrew Chase (Food Editor for Homemakers magazine) and I attended a Canadian cheese tasting, sponsored by the Dairy Framers of Canada and held at the Good Earth Cooking School, in Jordan, ON. Kathy Guidi, a maître fromager and founder and president of Artisan Cheese Marketing, personally selected 15 cheeses to showcase from across Canada, including several local favourites. Here are some of the highlights.

Two fabulous cheeses from International Cheese Company (Toronto) kicked off the evening. First, a fresh ricotta (with 18% milkfat) made us take a second look at fresh cheeses. While most ricottas are made from whey drained while making mozzarella or provolone, this cheese is made hourly from fresh milk, and the flavour is unbeatably fresh, sweet and creamy. The company's other cheese, Burrini, is a favourite in the Canadian Living Test Kitchen. An authentic hand-pulled pasta filata-style (string) cheese, the golden, mild, pear-shaped cheese is moulded around a ball of fresh-churned sweet butter. When spread on bread, it's absolutely delicious.

From Natural Pastures (Courtenay, B.C.) we had two selections. First, their double cream Camembert (Comox Camembert) made from the milk of "happy", grass-fed cows in Vancouver Island's Comox Valley. This cheese had a lovely bloomy rind, buttery flavour and delicate mushroom notes. Their second cheese, Verdelait Cracked Pepper, is a Gouda/Raclette-style cheese laced with cracked black peppercorns. We also enjoyed the nutty, organic raw milk Medium Maasdammer from Gort's Gouda (Salmon Arm, B.C.).

One of the Quebec picks was my favourite cheese at this year's Canadian Cheese Grand Prix, the prestigious contest held by the Dairy Farmers of Canada every two years to celebrate Canada's impressive cheese industry). Fritz Kaiser's Miranda is a wonderful Swiss-style cheese that has a fruity-nutty flavour, a lovely rusty washed rind and dense ivory paste. It is a particularly good match with macadamia nuts because they share similar buttery-nutty flavours.

Rounding out the evening were discussions among the cheesemakers. Monique Roussel and Andre Martineau of Bergerie aux 4 Vents (Sainte-Marie-de-Kent, N.B.) talked about making their blue cheese, Geai Bleu. Named after the Jay bird, this unpasteurized Jersey cow's milk cheese is exceptionally creamy and earthy with hits of the fresh salty sea air in the paste.

The other speaker was Wally Grobe, cheesemaker from Upper Canada Cheese Company (Jordan, O.N.). We joined Wally at 6 a.m. the next morning for a factory tour and to see their three cheeses, Niagara Gold, Comfort Cream and a fresh ricotta, being made -- from the pasteurizing of milk, draining of whey, adding of cultures, hand-ladling into moulds and washing of rind. The unique thing about these cheeses is that they are made from the milk of a single herd of Guernsey cows that pasture nearby, giving a golden hue to the cheeses.

The six hours we spent there flew by and I think we have a renewed appreciation for Canadian cheese (and cheesemakers.)