Yogurts, cheeses… three international medals for this Loire-Atlantique farm

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It’s a great year for the Mézerac farm cheese dairy in Saint-Lyphard (Loire-Atlantique).

She has just won a gold medal at the Lyon international competition for skyr, a white cheese of Icelandic origin, which she makes.

She also won two silver medals.

One for its vanilla farmhouse yogurt and the other for its Fleurs de Brière cheese.

This is the second edition of this competition in which 49 countries participated, notably presenting 1,224 samples from 469 cheese factories.

The Mézerac farm, which has four people to take care of the 140 dairy cows and 13 other people working in the cheese factory, began manufacturing yogurt and fromage blanc, Faisselles, in 2006.

Always in search of evolution, it launched into the manufacture of different cheeses in 2028: tomes, with different spices and flavors, Briéron and more recently “Fleurs de Brière”.

Family transmission

It is a beautiful family continuity of the Coué family, for several generations.

At the dairy, Jean-François and his sister, Chantal, run the cheese dairy.

But it is the new generation, with Laetitia who is preparing to take over from Chantal very soon, by becoming co-manager of the dairy with her father.

And there is no shortage of new ideas. She already has ideas for original flavors in mind for yogurts.

“All these medals are above all teamwork, not just one person,” emphasizes Mathieu Ostermann, who comes from Haute-Savoie.

He is responsible for the recovery and pasteurization of milk, arriving directly from the farm, attached to the dairy-cheese factory.

Benoît Paquereau, the cheese specialist from Vendée, is responsible for production.

“The secret of our production is that we take the time to do things, using traditional processes. The skyr, without fat, with its slow pasteurization, is very smooth in appearance and appreciated. Vanilla yogurt, with high pasteurization, is very creamy, which is what makes the difference in the competition in front of the 400 members of the jury,” explains Mathieu, who ensures the quality of the 500,000 liters of milk processed on site each year. .

“Hand brushed”

“Fleurs de Brière cheese is a pressed cheese, weighing 8 kg. The milk is thermized at a lower temperature than pasteurization. It takes at least 80 liters of milk to obtain this 8 kg cheese, which passes into a brine bath then matures for two to three months. It is brushed by hand, wiped and turned over every day,” explains Benoît, who is passionate about his work.

“In the dairy-cheese factory, everyone has a role, but we are still more or less versatile, we adapt to different positions if necessary. This too is our strength,” confirms Laetitia.

Useful: dairy products and cheeses are sold in particular on site, Monday to Friday from 2:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. and Saturday morning from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. Contact on 02 40 91 49 80, or: [email protected]

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