More Great Drives from TCC 

By Farhad Heydari

Given today's touchy political realities it's probably not a good idea to disclose this, but here goes: I am a Francophile. Indeed, I make a point of having my baguettes fresh daily or as often as I can. I love to pick at escargots. In season or out, I wade through incalculable bowls of moules à la marinière. I relish (however infrequently) leisurely bike rides along country lanes and, lest you wonder, I even fill my halved Charentais melons with liquor just like they do on theLeft Bank.

But since I don't get a chance to travel to the mother country as often as I'd like, I instead make my way to Québec. Yes, Québec: the very same Canadian province where the dutiful citizenry - appalled by the frenzied Americanization occurring in the rest of their country - nearly seceded from the union in a referendum meant to protect their rich heritage, preserve their culture, and protect their language.

That didn't happen (although another vote is expected soon) and things have, for the most part, substantially cooled off since those tense months back in 1995. More than a decade later, Québecers, however separatist, are embracing a more welcoming apolitical ideal: tourism - and specifically, agrotourism.

In fact, in the past few years, French Canadians have grown receptive, eager to lure travellers - be they from the U.S. or elsewhere - who want a French experience but without a Parisian price tag and get it thanks to the strength of the U.S dollar.

Apres moi, les mouches

Québec charms are best appreciated in the pre-black-fly season of late spring and early summer when the all-pallid milieu of winter gives way to a vibrant and velvety patchwork of lush gentle rises and a network of roads connecting it all. In fact, the continent's first road, chemin du Roi or King's Road is now Route 138: a picturesque rolling byway linking Montréal with Québec City along the northern shore of the St. Lawrence in two hours, rather than the five days it used to take by horse.

My journey, however, was focused on southern Québec and began when I crossed the border on a heavily-wooded, secondary road in Rouses Point, New York - where the main attraction are the endless vistas afforded by the shimmering waters of Lake Champlain.

The Canadian region abutting the U.S. is called, rather unromantically, the Eastern Townships. It is an undulating, unspoilt, and wooded storybook of ancient mountain ranges, stone fences, picturesque back roads, and pretty villages stretching from the international boundary to the southern banks of the St. Lawrence River and, like a string of pearls, as far east as the Québec-Maine border, some 390 kilometers away. It is rightly dubbed the Garden of Québec.

In all, there are 85 villages - speckled with wineries, restaurants, coops, specialized farms, and roadside stalls, selling everything from Tourtière to Maple Sugar Pie - that make up the Eastern Townships, including my first stop, Frelighsburg, which is nestled in the foothills of Vermont's Green Mountains and astride the River Aux Brochets. The chocolate-box village was named in honour of Dr. Abram Freligh, who in 1800 left his home in Dutchess County, New York, and emigrated here with an entourage of ten kids, servants, slaves. Unlike my arrival, his was by twenty-two double harness carriages.

The path he took is now known as route 243: a narrow sliver of blacktop meandering south toward Vermont, which these days attracts a steady flow of bicyclists who come to enjoy 500-kilometers of piste cyclable in what one newspaper exclaimed as "La Meilleure Destination Velo Au Monde" - the best place for cycling in the world.

Most of the year, visitors arrive in manageable numbers and come for the simple pleasures of bedding down in charming B&Bs like Domaine Des Chutes or for haute patisseries, like those found at Les Sucreries de l'Erable. Come September, however, the town gets inundated as more than a hundred artists and thousands of art lovers from around the region congregate at the largest open-air gallery, the Festiv'Art.

Drink in the scenery

I wrestled with images of artsy mayhem as I readied myself for lunch. Coming into the village, Aux Deux Clochers, a delightful café/restaurant sitting atop a lovely rambling brook, where the rustic outdoor patio was camouflaged in twines of bright color, vines, and Wisteria rightfully caught my eye. Its midmorning menu - with its samplings of creamy Brie served with fresh nuts; custardy omelettes served with crispy apples; jambon ballotines; and eggs in Florentine - overwhelmed my other senses.

While the carte du jour focused on simple country fare served with Gallic flair, the locally-based carte de vin dabbled in more sophisticated echelons. While not Canada's largest wine-growing region, Québec still manages to pump out some 250,000 rather superlative bottles, including a slew of vintages that have won it national repute. Surprisingly it wasn't until the mid-1980s that locals finally decided to brave the ultra-harsh winters and attempt to grow grapes here.

L'Orpailler, meaning "the gold-panner," is one of the five original labels and today the largest vineyard, producing some 70,000 bottles each year. I decide to pay the winery, just up the road in Dunham, and its winemaker, Frenchman Chareles-Henri de Coussergues, a visit. 

Using exclusively Québec varietals, the meticulously maintained 25-acre winery has managed to create some wonderful vintages, including a Cuvée spéciale from seyval blanc, Muscat and geisenheim and a decadent vin aperitif that won the InterVin International's Médaille de bronze in 1999 and 2000. The winery, which also has a restaurant in a rustic, white, wood-framed farmhouse, is open through November 15.

Four other equally spotless wineries, Les Blancs Côteaux (famous for its biological red wine), Domaine des Côtes d'Ardoise (featuring a beautiful terrace and walking trails), Les Trois Clochers (a smaller venture with sweet, lavender-scented white wine) and Clos Ste-Croix Dunham (a minute operation flanking farms of wildflowers) clutch the fringes of route 202 - their neat vines striating hillsides north to Cowansville.

From poutine to fois gras

The emergence of unfailingly good, locally produced wine in the early 1980's also ushered in a new era for the regions' gastronomy. And it wasn't a moment too soon. For years, its reputation had been blighted by the omnipresence of poutine: a regional specialty whose remarkable appeal belies its commonplace ingredients. "It's just greasy French fries with processed cheese curd, topped with run-of-the-mill gravy," says a Canadian-based journalist colleague. "It doesn't travel well."

But as the fortunes of the area's vineyards increased, so too did the quality and inventiveness of the cuisine.  In 1990, Julian Armstrong's cookbook A Taste of Québec finally put the province's haute-cuisine aptitude on the gastronomic map. Now in its second edition, gastronomes come from near and afar to learn about, say, du Breton pork (rosy and framed with creamy fat), which comes from hogs raised without antibiotics or growth hormones - and is exactly what I savored for lunch.

Pork aside, the other allure for gastronomes is Québec's endless supply of quality foie gras, which entered the pantheon of culinary distinction by pure happenstance. In 1998, New York's top restaurateurs were going through an insatiable foie gras purchasing period after having put the goose liver delicacy on their regular menus. With their suppliers in Sonoma and New York's Hudson Valley unable to keep up with demand (it was called the foie gras crisis - no, really), chefs turned to a new start-up in Québec.

Today, foie gras is still in demand and gaining popularity, according to Jacques Bissonnette, export manager of Palmex Inc., a farm in Québec, who says he currently sells three times more foie gras to chefs in Chicago alone than he did two years ago.  His shipments to New York, too, have kept apace. Unlike the sometimes-pungent taste of French foie gras, the Canadian variety is sweeter (because the geese are fed whole corn), which makes it infinitely more appealing to creative chefs.

I continued, however lazily, onto Mansonville, a cozy village and home to two charming bed and breakfasts - Restaurant Petit Europe and Le Vieux Presbytere, the latter, which would serve as my home for the night.

Solitude and spirit

The following morning, enveloped by a cornflower blue sky and emerald-colored hillsides, I decide to get closer to nature and burn off all those extra calories. My destination was the Owl's Head Resort, a modest ski area in the winter that morphs into a spruce framed outdoor paradise of moderate hiking, world-class golfing and endless meandering in the summer.

Named for the contour of the mountains' peak, which is said to resemble an owl's head, the land was settled originally by the Abenaki Indian tribe (the tribe have a rather worthwhile museum north in Trois-Rivières, where, as the name suggests, the St. Maurice River divides into three channels before converging with the St. Lawrence River) and development in the area is limited in keeping with the Indian tradition of preserving the "spirit" of the land so that it may endure for eternity. Even the resorts' native fieldstone clubhouse, framed with British Columbia fir timbers and 45-foot ceilings, is fashioned in a way to blend in with its milieu.

Also blending into the landscape is Owl Head's 6671-yard golf course - one of almost 150 perfectly manicured tracks in Québec, and the regions' third best. The resort also boasts its own hotel, located just five minutes from the course on the shores of Lac Memphremagog. But after a day of modern luxuries (including golf and spa treatments), I was peckish for the less-lavish but far more intriguing trappings of the cloisters of the Benedictine monastery to the north.

Founded in 1912, the Abbaye St. Benoit-du-Lac is a medieval-looking structure of towers and spires, with an interior decorated in yellow, red, and gold brick arches that just 50 monks call home. To make due, the monastery welcomes guests and houses them in sex-specific trappings: men in the Guest House whilst women call Saint Scholastica's Villa home for the night. The monastery was famous for its Gregorian Chants, which it retails on CDs. But that was before they began selling their apple vinegar, jams and jellies, cheeses, and ciders, the product of acres of orchards and a dairy herd in the dozens, to chefs in Montreal.

After an evening of monastic conviviality it was time to backtrack for the border by way of the Apple Route (itself worthy of a day of exploration). As I waited in the short line for immigration into Vermont, a cyclist approached and usurped me in the line. He whipped out his passport and whizzed quickly through. I would've tried the same thing, except I was more interested in the duty-free shop: even though I hadn't left the hemisphere, I felt as though I surely had.

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