This text is part of the special Pleasures notebook
Nicolas Taillefer and Karine Fournier are two passionate entrepreneurs who grow a very special Quebec garlic, since it is eco-responsible and is now available in supermarkets not only during this period of abundance of Quebec products, but all year round. .
It’s a beautiful novel, it’s a beautiful story. The young twenty-somethings in love Karine Fournier and Nicolas Taillefer are at the head of Une touch d’ail, a Quebec company based in Saint-Anicet which aims to overshadow the pods imported from China. “As there is not all the transport from Asia, the garlic is juicy and its taste comes with the freshness of the product,” explains Nicolas Taillefer. “The taste is really not the same, it is much stronger,” his partner immediately adds.
Because foreign garlic is not adapted to the local climate, the couple favors the tasty varieties Music, Duganski and Messidrome. “Even if our garlic is more expensive to sell [6 $ pour 150 g, NDLR]we don’t need to put in as much, so it balances out in the end,” says Karine Fournier.
Montérégie garlic also has the advantage of being environmentally friendly. No herbicides are used in its production. This is also sustainable: “to avoid food waste, all the garlic that is not sold is transformed into our by-products. We therefore have no loss,” points out Nicolas Taillefer. And Karine Fournier continues: “garlic that cannot be sold as is becomes either garlic puree, garlic sauce, or garlic flower pesto that we offer. in small pots. This allows us to exploit all of our harvests and we are proud of that. » From cultivation to packaging, everything is done on site.
A project that matures in the sun
To understand how Nicolas Taillefer and Karine Fournier got there, let’s go back in time. It all began when the fifteen-year-old farmer planted a thousand bulbs of garlic in his grandfather’s garden after seeing a television report on the plant belonging to the liliaceae species. “Following the first harvest, I sold everything thanks to word of mouth in the family. The following year, we invested the money I had made in other seeds and we tripled the area, he remembers. There was more garlic, so more buyers had to be found. That’s how I started supplying public markets in the region. I was young, I didn’t even have a car, it was my father and my mother who were going to carry me. »
For her part, Karine Fournier, whom he met at 16 in CEGEP in a natural sciences course, joined the company full-time after studying accounting at HEC for two years. “In the meantime, I was still in the field during the weekends and vacations,” explains the woman who has been part of the adventure since the project’s infancy.
Quietly, the affair is growing. For three years, Une touch d’ail products have been distributed in the twenty IGA grocery stores in Montérégie. With nearly 120 tons of their garlic — the equivalent of an area of 85 acres (almost 35 football fields!) cultivated — which will be put on the Quebec market this year, these are indeed all of the approximately 300 IGA branches in the province which are now exclusively supplied all year round.
To do this, the garlic harvested this summer is kept in a controlled atmosphere room, directly on the Une touch d’ail site, while waiting to end up on the IGA shelves. “It’s the volume that allows us to do that,” mentions Nicolas Taillefer. “Once out of this room, the garlic is packaged and sent to the store,” adds his partner.
Delighted by having the largest area cultivated with garlic in Quebec, Karine Fournier has made it her mission to contribute to the province’s food autonomy. “By supplying local garlic twelve months a year, we are heading in the right direction,” she enthuses. His biggest wish today? “Ensure that there is no more imported garlic. » The field of possibilities is in sight for A touch of garlic.
This content was produced by the Special Publications team at Duty, relating to marketing. The writing of the Duty did not take part.