Romancing our Regions:
The Tricky Matter of American Cheese Identity

by
Zoe Brickley

I hope you spent your Columbus Day-off reflecting, as I did, on the origins of our great country and potential that the future holds for us – especially in terms of cheese. After all, many of us see our own stories reflected in these milky treasures; we can trace our roots back to a faraway time and place, but we are uniquely American now. And most of us can take it a step further – ‘I’m a west coast kid’, or a Midwesterner, or more specifically, a ‘New Yorker.’ Those appellations mean something to us. But what does it mean for cheese to come from a place in the U.S.?

The Loire Valley of France, Alto Adige in Italy, the Basque country of Spain – these areas conjure images for the food savvy. Each European region that can be named has an age-old identity rooted in cultural history, physical geography, and more recently their rate and extent of modernization. EU’s agricultural products tend to typify these origins and have certain definable characteristics.

Fortunately for the American Cheese industry, this Old World modernization is often synonymous with Industrialization. This logic may not seem clear. You would think that Europe’s ability to crank out larger quantities of their flagship offerings (and export them to the ends of the earth) would bode well for the EU’s industry, and threaten ours. But there is opportunity here. Like most products, as the scale of production for a cheese climbs, rusticity and handmade appeal become illusory.

As the early chapters of our cheese story are just getting underway, a more traditional style of food artistry is becoming quite novel and attractive to both idealistic, enthusiastic youth, but also to a more conservative, mainstream audience. Whether it’s the thrill of reinventing civilization, the appeal of healthy or luxurious amenities, or the bottom line of a family farm – certain values are growing in popularity. These values happen to inform the best cheeses being made in the US. (read: farmstead, grassfed, handmade, locally sourced )

The result is a more intentional evolution of cheese. Survival and happenstance play second fiddle to the ideals of entrepreneurs. For this reason, individual farms or cheesemakers tend to come to mind when we talk about regions, rather than broader trends or styles.

For instance, Mike Gingrich at Uplands Cheese in Wisconsin is making what is recognized as one of our country’s best cheeses, Pleasant Ridge Reserve. Gingrich is bent on making the highest quality milk possible from a carefully selected herd grazing on a manicured pasture; an expert milk enthusiast, demonstrating perfection of design. His cheesemaking practices, in the end, are quite similar to award winning Jasper Hill Farm’s. Similar techniques lead to a matched caliber of product, but the motivation is different. The Kehler family at Jasper Hill is working explicitly towards a socio-economic transformation of Vermont’s rural communities. From their perspective, good cheesemaking practices are seen as a path to regional self-reliance. For Mike, they are simply the necessary means for realizing the greatest potential of his herd and business.

You may have guessed that California, Wisconsin, and Vermont are the centers of our primary cheesemaking regions. Though the greatest poundage of production does take place in these states, the stats are deceiving if we are talking about artisan, farmstead cheese. State government, particularly of CA and WI, is subsidizing commercial dairy and aggressively promoting the industry (‘Happy Cows…’, ‘Got Milk?’) But only a small percentage of that production includes cheese that could take advantage of the growing market for specialty imports.

On the other hand, the culture of dairying in the ‘big three’ does happen to foster more artisan dairies that are either able to capitalize on some of the Milk Marketing Board incentives (unless they raise goats and sheep), or have sprung up in difference to a commercial dairying approach.

Whatever the intent, I think that at this point in history, we are less likely to take farmstead products for granted, or opportunities to be involved in their creation, than in countries where the higher forms of nourishment have had a more constant presence.

You see, we industrialized early and thoroughly, and now we’re in the midst of a sort of post-industrial reconsideration of our food supply. For example, in the past decade we’ve seen the word ‘organic’ drastically shift in meaning. The movement, ironically, began in early 20th century Germany as a facet of ultra-conservative utopian idealism. Eek. The ball was then picked up at the end of that century by the marginalized rhetoric of crunchy leftists railing against factory farming. Now it has reached super-store ubiquity as a more conventional ‘no-brainer’ approach to making food. The crusaders have let that word go, still intent on decentralizing agriculture. But here’s your take-home message – the cheese around here tastes better as ‘slow food’ gains appeal.

So we’re re-creating more authentic versions of the now commoditized European imports right here at home. But the ability to appropriate traditional cheesemaking techniques – and perfect them through the use of modern contrivances like pH meters and commercial cultures – can actually serve to dilute our sense of place. The type of cheese we choose to make is no longer constricted by climate, geography, or local knowledge pools, though all of these factors do have a role in Farmstead cheese.

More often cheeses are recognizable for their individual producers and dairies. And regional identity tends to develop from one of these figureheads, influenced by local political economies. Note the satellite culture of Pyrenees style sheep tommes surrounding the famous Major Farm’s VT Shepherd in the Northeast, or Loire-esqe ashed goat cheeses that capitalize on Mary Keen’s Cypress Grove market in the west.

What can we say – It’s like Columbus getting credit for discovering us. The American People love a celebrity… and apparently, mavericks… celebrity mavericks! I mean, that’s a pretty apt description for a plucky farmer carving out a niche for her personal brand of terroir in a market so over-served by cheap block cheddar and an insane diversity of imports. So for now, our artisan cheese landscape looks more like a map of the stars. But hey – at least we have a map.