Designated Origin Cheeses

I'm going to break away a little and discuss the European standard for controlling traditional cheeses. It's not the most light-hearted topic, but it really helps with that re-occurring question 'well, what kind of cheese is it?!'.

In the beginning (whenever that was) cheeses were made in one place, with local milk and aged in local caves etc. An area's micro climate influences the quality of feed for milk animals, the type of animals that thrive there, and provides the conditions for cheese aging, among many other things. This all leads to cheeses that share a specific and expected flavor, called terroir in french, which roughly means 'of the land'. Cheeses were named for the places they came from, and an expected terroir was associated with those names.

Here is where governments started to get involved. To protect terrior, as well as local reputations and economies, certain products were given a special status called Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) for the European Union, Appellation d'Origine Controlee (AOC) in France, Denominazione di
Origine Controllata (DOC) in Italy, Denominacion de Origen (DdO) in Spain, Denominacao de Origem (DdO) in Portugal.... and the list goes on. Each system is slightly different, but they all do similar things.

As an example of what it takes to qualify for PDO status let's look at one of the first cheeses to be designated PDO/AOC: Roquefort

Roquefort is a creamy/crumbly strongly flavored blue cheese, and one of the most beloved cheeses in the world. To get the Roquefort appellation a cheese must:

• Be made from the whole, raw milk of a Lacaune sheep
• The sheep must be pasture raised, in a limited region
• The milk must be no more than two days old
• Aging has to occur in the natural limestone caves of Mont Cambalou in Roquefort-sur-Soulzan

In the end there are different Roqueforts, made by different producers, but not just anything can be Roquefort. So, is it one specific cheese? No. Is it a type of cheese? Kind of. Your local dairy could be making the same 'kind' of cheese, but it wouldn't be Roquefort. Some names have become so prevalent, that they have broken away from PDO control; how much U.S. 'Parmesan' is from Parma, Italy? In Europe it is illegal to sell anything not meeting PDO standards as Parmesan, but in the U.S. pretty much anything can carry the name. Here, only those cheeses baring the appellation Parmigiano-Reggiano are true, Italian Parmesan.

This is one of the reasons it is so hard to organize cheese in categories and in my head! There are lots of nutty, hard grating cheeses, a few Parmigiano-Reggianos and such of variety of hard cheeses, from many types of milk, with an array of flavors. When in doubt I like to try new things and eat more cheese!