Cheese whiz Sparked by a craving for the flavours of home, Brazilian ex-pat’s first foray into fromage proves fruitful By: David Sanderson Posted: 5:01 PM CDT Thursday, Aug. 8, 2024

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This article was published 08/08/2024 (731 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BLUMENORT — Fabiola Della Pria wasn’t expecting too much when she attended an international cheese competition in Buffalo, N.Y., during the first week of July.

After all, it had been less than 24 months since the Blumenort resident officially launched Unique Brazilian Dairy, a home-based venture that markets South American-style cheeses and spreads based on recipes developed in her native Brazil. That and it was the first time her fare would be judged on a world stage.

Imagine Della Pria’s surprise, then, when her Minas frescal cheese, a mild-flavoured offering that resembles mozzarella in appearance and pairs well with salads and pasta, was awarded a silver medal in the American Cheese Society’s “fresh, unripened, all milks” category, one spot ahead of V&V Supremo, a decorated Chicago cheesemaker that has been in operation since 1964.

The fact of the matter is she went there primarily to receive feedback — good or bad — from a set of highly respected chefs and cheesemongers, Della Pria says, declaring that one can’t really discuss cheese without munching on cheese, as she slides over a cube of Minas frescal that has been dipped in a milk-fudge topping called dulce de leche, another of her products.

“So when it was announced that my cheese placed second…”

Here the married mother of three pauses to collect her thoughts.

“This is not my home country, but I was so honoured and proud to represent Canada and Manitoba,” she continues, fetching her medal, a facsimile of which now adorns her packaging. “It’s kind of a give-back feeling for all the grace and goodness my family has received, since the first day we landed here eight years ago.”

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Della Pria was born and raised in São Paulo, Brazil’s most populous city. Fifteen years ago she and her husband Delcio Pereira acquired a hobby farm in the countryside to serve as a weekend getaway for their young family.

Many of the neighbouring farms produced Minas cheese, so-named for their home state of Minas Gerais. Because Della Pria had grown up consuming that exact cheese — it was as much a part of their daily breakfast as eggs and toast, she says — she grew curious how to make it for herself.

“Everybody was kind enough to teach me recipes that in some cases go back hundreds of years, and pretty soon I was putting my own spin on it,” she says, seated next to her father, who is visiting from Brazil for the summer.

Della Pria and Pereira’s s children were ages 10, nine and four in 2015, the year an estimated 60,000 Brazilians were killed owing to a combination of violent political protests and ongoing conflicts that pitted the country’s security forces against organized-crime outfits.

That was enough, the couple concluded; it was imperative they find a safer environment for their kids to grow up in, somewhere they could play outside or stroll to school without fearing for their lives.

Neither of them was overly familiar with Canada. They did their homework, however, and agreed it sounded ideal. Except when they realized how financially difficult it would be for a family of five to live in Toronto or Vancouver, the cities they’d read the most about, they expanded their search, ultimately settling on Manitoba’s capital.

She laughs, recalling the first week they moved to Winnipeg, in November 2016. They were renting an apartment in St. Boniface and because their kids had never experienced snow before, all three couldn’t wait to head outside to romp around in an early-season storm that dumped 20 centimetres of the white stuff on their street.

It took them 30 minutes to get properly dressed, but after being gone for five minutes tops, they rushed back in complaining our winter wonderland wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

By the following year, Della Pria, who didn’t speak a lick of English when she arrived, was studying finance at Red River College Polytechnic, to go along with a nursing degree and master of marketing degree she’d earned back home. She landed a sales position straight out of school.

Things were going along swimmingly yet there were elements of Brazil she missed, cheese especially.

“You go to the supermarket here and it’s cheddar this, cheddar that. Don’t get me wrong, I like cheddar, but I was like ‘there has to be something different.’”

In 2019, by which time they had relocated to Blumenort, Della Pria reached out to Stoney Brook Creamery, a Steinbach-area business specializing in organic whole milk, the type she’d used to make cheese in São Paulo. It had been a while since she’d done a batch but it was like riding a bike, she reports.

Within a few weeks, she was sharing what she was turning out with friends and co-workers who would universally remark “Fabiola, this is so unique, you have to sell it.”

Just like that, she came up with a name for what was still a pipedream: Unique Brazilian Dairy.

Following more than two years of product development, Della Pria, who presently utilizes Stoney Brook’s fully- licensed facility to produce cheese a few days a week, debuted her Minas frescal at a farmers’ market in Kleefeld, close to where they live, in August 2022. She sold every last block. That gave her the confidence she needed to approach the powers that be at St. Norbert Farmers’ Market on Pembina Highway.

“Everybody was telling me it was a two-year wait for vendors and not to get my hopes up but after convincing the managers to sample my cheese, they told me it was such a unique product that they’d give me a one-time slot,” she says.

“I sold out again so they invited me to that year’s winter markets. I’ve been there every Saturday, pretty much, ever since.”

In addition to Minas frescal and the aforementioned dulce de leche, Della Pria also produces requeijão, a ricotta-like spread that goes great on crackers or bagels, as well as quejo-de-coalho, a variety of skewered cheese that is grilled over an open flame and eaten like a kabob.

Najara Barros and Noel Bernier, owners of Hermano’s Restaurant and Wine Bar, a South American steakhouse at 179 Bannatyne Ave., became excited two months ago when Della Pria contacted them to inquire if they would be interested in carrying her quejo-de-coalho at their premises.

She brought some by for them to taste. Barros, who grew up in Natal, a city in northeastern Brazil roughly the same size as Winnipeg, was sold immediately.

“We used to offer (quejo-de-coalho) but after we lost the person who was making it for us, we looked high and low across Canada for something similar, to no avail,” says Barros, who opened Hermano’s along with Bernier in 2009.

“I know how distinctive a cheese it is — it’s native to my part of (Brazil) — so when I say it doesn’t get more authentic than Fabiola’s, I like to think I know what I’m talking about.”

Della Pria’s grilled quejo-de-coalho now shows up at Hermano’s as an appetizer, and also as part of a mixed-greens salad augmented with prosciutto, cantaloupe and red onions. That ain’t all, Bernier points out. Ahead of Between the Buns, a local burger event slated for the first week of September, Hermano’s is currently experimenting with Della Pria’s Minas frescal cheese for its ground-round entry.

“The one we’re probably going to go with is our usual burger topped with lettuce, a slice of grilled pineapple as well as her grilled Minas,” Bernier says, slicing a just-cooked rendition in half to properly show it off.

“To be able to work in partnership with an award-winning cheesemaker, somebody who is building a life in Canada while still hanging on to her Brazilian traditions? Let’s just say we couldn’t ask for a better fit here at the restaurant.”

Besides Hermano’s and farmers’ markets, Unique Brazilian Dairy is available at dozens of retail outlets, including De Luca’s, Red River Co-op, Vita-Health and Miller’s Meats. Della Pria’s cheeses will also be front-and-centre at Folklorama’s ever-popular Brazilian pavilion inside the RBC Convention Centre, from Aug. 11 to 17.

Additionally, not only is she negotiating with a major distributor to introduce her product line to the rest of Canada, she currently has her sights set on next summer’s American Cheese Society showdown, where she hopes to add to last month’s medal haul. Before that occurs, though, she may want to sock away a few reais, the official currency of Brazil.

The 2025 competition is slated for California and since the kids will be accompanying her and her husband, a side venture to Disneyland might be in the curds, err cards, she says with a wink.

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david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca