American terroir? Or simply skillful cheesemakers...

In my last post, I mentioned that Europeans put great store in geographic origin. In fact, the French term "terroir" is often used to refer to the features of (usually) a wine that are geographically determined. It's interesting that hardly any time elapsed from my making that post when I found myself looking at a book entitled "American Terroir," which uses that concept in characterizing some of our domestic foods: not just wine, says thw author, but vegetables, cheese, and such are terroir-dependent. And each of his chapters describes a different food, and points out somewhere on the North American Continent (yes, despite the title, his focus is the whole continent, not just the U. S. A.) where a great version is produced.

And one of those chapters talks about cheese. And his example is from Northeastern Vermont, Jasper Hill Farm, a cheesemaker and affineur that's been mentioned before in this blog. Now although he mentions the great Stilton-like cheese that they produce, Bayley Hazen Blue, most of the chapter describes a cheese of theirs that I haven't tasted, Winnimere. Now from the way it's been described, this is a Taleggio-like cheese, which would make it resemble Meadow Creek Farms' Grayson and Cowgirl Creamery's Red Hawk, and so we have three American products, from Vermont, Virginia, and California, all closely resembling an Italian cheese (Taleggio) and, of course, thus also resembling a French type, Pont l'Evêque. Given that these places cover quite a lot of territory, I think that makes a strong case that it is not terroir that makes a great cheese, but the skill of the cheesemaker. (And I'd love to try Winnimere, because Jasper Hill seems to have some great cheesemaking skills!)

Classifying cheeses

In Europe, they consider geographic origin the most important identification of such products as wine and cheese. Label a sparkling white wine from California or New York State as "champagne" and all France will go up in arms ("Champagne," according to French law, and probably by now European Union law, must come from a certain area in France!). So if an American company wants to sell wine over there, they must conform to these geography-oriented regulations.

Here in the US, geography is less dominant; anyone can call a cheese "Cheddar" even if it doesn't come from England, though lately we have seen State additions to these ("New York State Cheddar," "Vermont Cheddar," "Wisconsin Cheddar," etc.) but as far as I know we do not have laws about these. What does matter in the USA is trademarks: try to pass off a cola drink as "Coca-Cola" if it's not made by the company that owns that trademark, and it could get you in a pile of trouble.

In any case, these restrictions mean that categorizing cheeses to group together very similar ones runs into terminology problems. Consider four cheeses I have bought in recent days; two from the USA and two from Europe. (I bought three of them at Whole Foods Market; the fourth is also available there, but I didn't buy it there; namely Red Hawk, which I got at a kiosk that Cowgirl Creamery ran at the Bethesda Farmer's Market.):

1. Taleggio, from Italy;
2. Pont l'Evêque, from France;
3. Grayson, from Virginia; and
4. Red Hawk, from California.

The first two are geographical designations; anyone in those parts of Italy and France can produce a cheese by that name, while anyone not in those parts of Italy and France can never do so, no matter how much like these cheeses their product is. The last two are trademarked. Meadowcreek Farms produces Grayson; anyone else (even if they are located in Grayson County, Virginia, the source of the name!) would be out of luck. Cowgirl Creamery produces Red Hawk and several other cheeses, but I'm talking about this one, because it is so much like the other three in this list.

All four of these cheeses are soft (almost liquid), with a thick leathery rind. They have a strong smell which might suggest spoilage if you didn't know they're supposed to smell that way. And they taste almost identically. The Grayson is slightly darker, more yellow-orange, and somewhat stronger-flavored than the other three, but I'd be hard put to tell the other three apart; and even the Grayson, in the dark, would be nearly indistinguishable. But there is no one word I could use generically to refer to these cheeses (and others like them). If I described them as "Taleggio-type" or "Pont l'Evêque-type," the Europeans would be as horrified as they are with "California champagne," and if I described them as "Grayson-type" or "Red Hawk-type," the trademark-owners would sue.

What are we to do?