Extraordinary

Mojo JoJo’s Jowhanna Alleyne travelled from Edmonton to present her pickles and preserves at the Great Canadian Cheese Festival in Picton on Saturday.

Picton is the centre of the artisanal food and drink world for a weekend

Johwanna Alleyne brought her Mojo JoJo pickles and preserves all the way from Edmonton to the Great Canadian Cheese Festival in Picton on the weekend. Why?

“Because it is artisan dense,” explained the purveyor of hand-packed pickles, featuring interesting and unusual flavour combinations. How about wasabi and soy beans? Or rutabaga pickles preserved in gin, lemon and juniper berries?

For Mojo JoJo, participation in the Great Canadian Cheese Festival isn’t about how many jars of pickles she sold in Picton, but rather this is her entry into the Ontario—and perhaps the Canadian—artisanal food sector. She is one of more than 50 artisanal food preparers to present their wares at the festival this year.

In four short years, this weekend festival has become the hub of the artisanal food category. For visitors (up 21 per cent over last year, another record) the show is rare opportunity to sample handcrafted, highly specialized food and drink that rooted in the terroir—the land in which the ingredients were grown.

It is evident that these folks are passionate about what they make and how they make it. They are not aiming for the lowest common denominator. In fact, they are the diametric opposite of food processing and packaging companies from whom we tend to buy most of our groceries.

In another corner of the CrystalPalace, Dorina Ceapa travelled from New Brunswick to share her Acadian Sturgeon and Caviar. Across the way, a brand new artisanal brewery from just north of Bath is getting set to launch its MacKinnon Brothers beer, crafted from ingredients cultivated on the farm that has been in their family for the past 230 years.

But for each of these producers, the connections they make at this show and the insights they gain in areas such as distribution and marketing, are the key reasons they come to Picton—and why more come every year.

Despite the expansion of the festival to a rich variety of food and drink, the Great Canadian Cheese Festival is still very much about cheese. Specialty cheese makers both large and small congregate, challenging each other with ever more daring and exquisite cheeses.

The County is well represented by both Black River Cheese and FifthTown. A good selection of County wines were available to sample and even purchase due to relaxed regulations about sale of wine in farm markets. Huff Estates. Casa Dea. Sandbanks. Broken Stone. The Grange. Three Dog. Waupoos Estate. Norman Hardie. Keint-He. Del Gatto. Rosehall Run. Stanners. Lighthall. County Cider Company was also present.

Contrary to earlier reporting, the municipality has emerged as a major sponsor of the festival—supporting the phenomenon that has become the Great Canadian Cheese Festival.

For at least one weekend each year, PrinceEdwardCounty has become the centre of the artisanal food universe in Canada. It is something to build on.