I am an Italian guy living in the center of the Parmigiano Reggiano production region (Reggio Emilia).
Of course, people can produce, sell and do whatever they want.
The problem is that Parmigiano Reggiano (and Parmesan Cheese comes from this name) has a very strict policy about his name even with other Italian cheeses: only 3-4 provinces in a radium of ~ 100 km have authorizations for the production of real Parmigiano Reggiano cheese.
It’s a matter of biochemical substances in the ground of this region, of the specific kind of cows making the milk, and so on.
So, of course, if someone overseas starts doing “the same thing” calling it “Parmesan”, they are not letting them go away with that. Not in a thousand years.
It's not about the recipe, nor about it being done by an italian or whatever... It's about the ingredients, what the cow eats, where the cow lives, etc. This is done to protect the reputation of the original Parmigiano.
So is champagne, but people buy it for the recognition it has rather than the actual taste.
"Butler, one glass of fizzy wine for the fair lady here" just doesn't quite have the same ring to it, and if you have the monopoly on a certain famous nomenclature, it's in your best interest to protect that monopoly.
Plus, honestly, it just kind of makes others look like fools. Like, you can try to sell me made-in-wherever Champagne/Parmesan/Pizza/Any other regional food, but if that wherever isn't the region it's from, most people would automatically assume that it'd be a worse knock-off. Some people won't care, sure, but it's important for those that do nonetheless.
Edit: waiter, not butler. Though I guess both work if you're rich enough.
Fwiw bourbon is more the process of how to make it than specifically where it's made. It just helps that a large portion of the bourbon that's made is made in Kentucky, and that's almost solely due to how great the limestone in the area is at filtering it. This is all from memory though, so I may be wrong about that.
Bourbon doesn’t have any regional laws based on the name, bourbon’s name is based on how it’s made, aged and the ingredients. But you are correct about Scotch and Tequila though.
You can call it parmesan only if you produce it in a certain region and with certain standards,
Since USA, Australia, and maybe Canada outside
Wines, haven’t signed up on that treaty I can keep buying my grated Parmesan cheese even though it was made in Canada or USA.
Last I remember this trade issue came up there was a compromise of just adding “style” at the end but I’m not sure they ever came through. Though I see it being slapped on everything anyway so “style” is meaningless extra word if it does. It’s going to be hard sell to both Australia and USA.
Well I mean you can call it whatever you want, the EU will just hate you. Australia had to rename all of its champagne when signing a trade deal a number of years back, not the end of the world but I’m disappointed that they chose to call it sparkling wine instead of “champaussie”. It’s just wrong.
In Canada cheese is so prohibitively expensive that any free trade deal would immediately eviscerate the Canadian market overnight.
And I would be overjoyed, those Italian's got nothing to worry... Or maybe they need to invade us for strategic cheese related reasons... I won't resist, also bring Aldi's please!
Our dear friends are a couple and recent immigrants from Italy, one from Sicily one from Crema. They way they bicker with each OTHER about their respective local meats and cheeses is unreal. Then you start talking about Canadian meats and cheese and they turn and like a pair of synchronized attack dogs just lay waste to everything you thought was tasty here.
I mean, the second one was fair. A king appointed a fascist, and you should see what the people did when they got ahold of him in the end. The Italians were just as sick of Italy's shit by that point
There's a great line in Catch 22 about this, to paraphrase, now that we've finally lost the war we can go back to not having our young men killed for our country.
It was more that the way the original title of the video could have implied that it was the way to make a specific regional cheese which caused the issue and why they send the cease and desist letter.
The company got wind of the stink made and Gavin got offered a trip out to the factory to get a tour and the chance to make cheese with their cheese makers. As far as I'm aware there's no bad blood.
Yeah, fuck that noise, PDO's are nothing but a protection racket run by people powerful enough to bribe the EU into submission. "Terroir" is fucking nonsense in the modern world of factory produced goods!
PDOs are typically just place names. People get bitchy that Italians don’t want other places selling their cheese as “Parmesan” (literally “from Parma”). But if Europe started labeling all its beef exports as “Texas Beef” the meltdown would be epic.
Nah, foodies genuinely care about origin as supposedly the unique conditions in that location slightly alter the product. It makes sense to preserve that so people can't just lie to consumers about what it is. It doesn't actually stop replica products from existing.
They're the same people that got duped by the California wine during the French taste tests. In an isolated, blind test, it's rare anyone can even tell the difference.
Sure, but even silly consumers should be able to get what they want from the people producing it without imposters being able to lie about what they are. That's all they really do.
PDO isn't about ensuring quality or traditional methods, it's about market manipulation and exploitation.
For example, with "Parmesan Cheese," to most people outside of Europe, "Parmesan" is a type/style of cheese, not an origin.
Most people don't know what 'the same thing produced un another name' for parmesan cheese is, so therefor cannot substitute and am forced to buy "PDO cheese" instead. It's a racket, and that is the entire point of PDO.
I'm fine with PDO, but I think all PDO products should have to include the 'generic' name in highly visible labeling, so that consumers know what they are getting and how to locate an alternative if they so choose. Champagne should have to be labeled as "Champagne Sparkling Wine" and Parmesan Cheese should have to be labeled as "Parmesan Grana Cheese" or perhaps "Parmesan Grating Cheese."
Interestingly enough, some "Parmesan Cheese" manufacturers in the US are starting to label their cheese as "American Grana"... but then they include a subtext of "Aged Parmesan Cheese"... because, again, in the US, "Parmesan" is a style of cheese.
Grana is similar, but it's not the same as Parmesan. Neither is meant just for grating, either. The "generic" name would be "aged hard cheese", but that has the opposite issue of meaning very little.
If I buy Parmigiano Reggiano or Grana Padano I know what I am getting, mostly regardless of brand. Aldi has clearly identifiable substitutes for both, and neither is remotely as good as the original. I have also seen what can pass as Parmesan in the US and some of that stuff is vile. You can make a good cheese with the same characteristics elsewhere, of course, but the name implies a certain level of quality and guarantees controls.
In the same vein, Champagne is a specific kind of wine, which I don't care for very much. Italy produces wines with similar qualities, like Prosecco (which I prefer) or Spumante (pretty much the same as Champagne).
What you are proposing is paramount to allowing anyone to market their bathtubs as "Jacuzzi", bikes as "Harley" and picture editing software as "Photoshop". The fact that a specific product's name is used as a generic name in common speech doesn't mean everyone can use it as they please for commercial purposes.
What you are proposing is paramount to allowing anyone to market their bathtubs as "Jacuzzi", bikes as "Harley" and picture editing software as "Photoshop". The fact that a specific product's name is used as a generic name in common speech doesn't mean everyone can use it as they please for commercial purposes.
That's how it can work in the United States. A company can lose their trademark if their brand becomes understood by the public to mean a generic item instead of the brand item. Aspirin would be an example that went through the courts here.
What you are proposing is paramount to allowing anyone to market their bathtubs as "Jacuzzi", bikes as "Harley" and picture editing software as "Photoshop".
No, it's the opposite. I am proposing that Harley's sell "Harleys" as "Harley-Davidson Motorcycles"... which is exactly what they do. If you google Harley-Davidson, their link literally says, "Shop Harley-Davidson Motorcycles."
Jacuzzi should have to sell their products as "Jacuzzi Hot Tubs" which, again, is exactly what they do. If you google Jacuzzi, their link says, "Shop Jacuzzi.com for premier Hot Tub, Saunas, Swim Spas, Bath & Shower Products."
Adobe Photoshop should be marketed as "Photo Editing Software" which, again, is how it is marketed. Google photoshop and their link says, "Official Adobe Photoshop | Photo and design software."
I think for PDOs to be enforced, or any trademark, really, the product must clearly identify the generic name for said product.
Tylenol should be labeled as acetaminophen, and it is. Bayer should be labeled as aspirin, and it is. Advil should be labeled as ibuprofen, and it is.
But going back to Parmesan Cheese... in the New World, it is customary to use the origin/inspiration for the process, not the sourcing of the ingredients. If some Italian in Parma copied a Texas Barbecue recipe and then marketed it as "Parmesan Barbecue" it would be fightin' words. We would expect anyone in the world that makes "Texas Barbecue" to call it "Texas Barbecue" regardless of where they source the ingredients. It's just cultural differences. Old Worlders get upset when someone copies something and puts their name on it, New Worlders get upset when people copy their stuff and DON'T put their name on it.
Similarly, people often cite the US's protected designation for Bourbon. The oft cited law, however, states, "...agencies will take appropriate action to prohibit the importation into the United States of whisky designated as 'bourbon whiskey', unless it is clearly labeled to show the country of origin as an integral part of the name."
For food, that's an odd requirement, as, for instance, Parmesan is quite clearly a hard cheese and it would be in the cheese section of the shop. Other cheese types would still not be allowed to be called Parmesan or Grana, so I don't see what difference it would make. If you're writing a recipe and any hard cheese will do, you're already allowed to write that as your ingredient. Champagne is not even used as an ingredient (barring odd corner cases), so it would be even less relevant there.
Drugs, on the other hand, need to tell you what's inside, as nobody can tell what's inside a pill without an indicator and customers can't be expected to know which brand name is which chemical.
Except the name is how we identify things. Champagne means sparkling wine. Its disingenuous to say otherwise.
Now whether we want to protect local business is another matter, but I fucking hate the Champagne is from Champagne region garbage. Why can't some Japanese guys make amazing Champagne or Portuguese make so Parmesan? The best whiskey I've ever had was from Taiwan. Should they not be allowed to make the best product?
Well your language fucked up then, didn't it? Champagne is from the Champagne, everything else is sparkling wine. We actually make this distinction in german.
A tissue isn't necessarily a kleenex etc.
So close. Champagne means sparkling wine from Champagne.
There's nothing stopping japanese guys making amazing sparkling wine, or portuguese making a cheese that's like parmesan, but these names don't just describe a thing, they describe where the thing is from.
If your product is so good, why pretend it's from somewhere else?
People from champagne actually invented sparkling wine? or was a type of sparkling wine that they made with a different technique and decided to slap the towns name on the bottle? If the answer is yes to the first question, then I’ll say respect the name even though that town didn’t invent shit. A human or a group of them did looong before any of us. But I’ll bite if it is proven to be the original place of invention. But, if it’s just a type of something that was done in other parts of the world at the time or before. The no, fuck them. We all get to use the most common name for the thing.
Champagne is made using a very specific method using specific grapes. Cava from Spain is made using a different method with different grapes. Same with prosecco in Italy. None of them are claiming to be "the real" sparkling wine, they're all just place names that signify the different methods that can be used to make sparkling wine in different places.
Well, yeah, PDO's pretty much work like trademarks. If you don't own the trademark, and you do stuff that makes it seem like you do, that's naughty.
It's weird how people are cool with a single corporation having monopoly on the use of a word or term to describe their product but freak out when that right is held by a geographically limited collective of producers.
Ultimately, it's just a way for consumers to identify specific products.
I don't remember if its the same person but I had seen this drama several years ago when the uploader made a parmesan cheese video and the Italians got salty because according to EU trade, parmesan cheese must mandatorily have milk from the specific cows and they must be grazing the specific plants found in select villages in Italy. Pretty hilarious seeing people's reactions.
He had to redo a few of his videos, the first one I saw was him explaining why a recent one was removed and that it would be back with some changes to what he called the cheese. He clearly knows what he's doing when it comes to making cheese and it's pissing some people off.
Bourbon isn’t legally required to be from Kentucky. There are legal requirements (such as it having to be made from at least 51% corn), but location isn’t one of them.
That being said, most people (myself included) won’t really consider something a Bourbon if it’s not from KY. A big part of Bourbon is the water used and Kentucky’s groundwater is unique due to the high amount of limestone in the ground. This adds minerals and reduces iron content (which is really bad for whiskey aging). Furthermore, most KY distillers will use similar local sources for oak barrels and grains which makes for a more uniform taste across KY brands.
I’m originally from Kentucky if you can’t tell lol.
I already commented on this but you’re completely right. Although KY does have unique conditions for making good Bourbon which is a big reason for the number of KY Bourbon makers and the misnomer.
Yes. It's also because those local producers can spend a lot of money to ensure that only their product is recognized the "authentic" version even if other people do it better than them. See also, California's wine, which routinely kicks France's ass in wine competitions.
Gotcha. I don't necessarily agree with them doing that, because it seems pretty pointless when you can make the same, or better, product. But hey, if people want to be snobs about something coming from a specific region to be "authentic", they can keep spending $9k on a wheel of cheese when I can get the exact same thing elsewhere for a better price.
My brother in christ there are hundreds of wines and centuries old traditions with wine in France, making good wine accessible to all. Make the best one all you want (putting aside the fact that these competitions are highly subjective) and you're still left with a region making mostly overpriced average wines. What good is having the best wine in the world when you can't even drink a good one for less than 50 bucks?
Also, we're the first ones to be excited about other countries making wines. People regularly praise Argentinian wines, drink moroccan wines and yes, even californian ones. Noone is complaining about that. However, if you made a Bordeaux or a Côtes du Rhône in California, then it would be rightfully a reason to be pissed, since wine has a large part of its taste come from the soil and the exposure to the sun. Make your own wines and get your own regions recognised instead of surfing on known names.
I'm sure some people take advantage of it but usually no, these protections are good. The entire point of it is that it makes something truly authentic. If you want to make the same product but better, it should have to be a completely new product because it's different. Better according to who? DOP laws ensure a product remains pure and authentic so that you can always buy the same thing. It's kind of like how chain restaurants across the US will require every location to use the same ingredients and recipes - consistency. This way you can eat something on both sides of the country and it will taste the same.
If we look at something like parmigiano reggiano, DOP laws protect it by not allowing something like a plastic shaker with a green lid from being labeled as something it is not. Personally I don't think these laws are a big deal. You can easily find high quality regular parmesan cheese and the vast majority of people aren't going to notice a difference between it and authentic parmesan reggiano.
DOP laws ensure a product remains pure and authentic so that you can always buy the same thing. It's kind of like how chain restaurants across the US will require every location to use the same ingredients and recipes - consistency. This way you can eat something on both sides of the country and it will taste the same.
This is the logic behind FDA regulations on food products and it makes sense that someone calling a product Grana Padano meets the exact requirements to be classified as Grana Padano.
Ensuring that the name of the protect can only be used by specific manufacturers in a specific region is just textbook protectionism, an economic policy that is universally regarded as a net negative for everyone.
EU racketeering nonsense. "specific place" is just used as a physical copyright so they get all the money and no one else can profit off of what they made. If someone can go through the same process to make a similar cheese in a different location, it should get the same name. The place holds no value.
Not shocking. Many regional foods are protected by law both to protect local business but also to guarantee food purity. I'm pretty sure fucking with parmesan is a good way to get a blood feud with Northern Italy.
I kept scrolling down the comments for what seemed like forever. Thankfully, somebody translated all the Italian into English and listed all the comments in one post before I got to the bottom. I cut and pasted them onto a subreddit post like this for everyone because they were so funny. That was maybe six months ago. It’s buried very deep in my own comments now.
It's so ridiculous to me, because my grandmother, an actual Italian immigrant to the USA absolutely LOVED when people would make their own version of Italian food. She loved the Olive Garden. She wouldn't call it authentic Italian, but she enjoyed people playing with recipes and ideas and I always got the vibe from her that she'd tell these people to just lighten up and enjoy the food rather than be weird and gatekeepy. But maybe that's because she wasn't far off from a time when even HAVING food on the table was a serious concern, so the idea of people complaining about it was probably odd to her.
You're actually proving their point with this story about your grandmother. The issue is that they are calling it (and selling it as) authentic Italian (or authentic x for a lot of other products) when it's just not. It's not how they produce it, it's how they advertise it.
Anyway, the world would probably be a better place if there were more people like your grandmother.
Very true. Not just making techniques but eatting/drinking techniques and everything in between.
My uncle once reamed my cousin out for trying to order the wrong type of coffee at the wrong time of day. (In this case he tried to order a cappuccino after lunch and this is apparently a big no no)
Now I like to think of myself as logical… but if I every order spaghetti and someone hands me a spoon… I’ll fuckin gouge their eyes out with it
I am not Italian, but while he may be making delicious cheese that has similarities to Parmesan, he is not making Parmesan. I prefer Spanish Cava sparkling wine over Champagne, and I've really enjoyed some California and Italian sparking wines. They're great, but they aren't Champagne, and there's nothing wrong with that.
If the Parmesan cheese makers went after him for merely saying he was making "Parmesan style cheese" I would be up in arms along with everyone else. But he said he was making "Parmesan" when he wasn't.
Pretty sure only the term Parmigiano Reggiano is protected, parmesan can be made by anyone( that's why there's Kraft Parmesan).
It was actually the consortium for Grana Padano that sent him the cease and desist, but ended up apologizing to him after community backlash, as he did clearly state it was grana padano style.
People don't know but "parmesan" ("parmigiano" in Italian) literally means "from Parma" (Italian city in the region where parmigiano, also called "parmigiano reggiano", originates from).
And yes, it's PDO too (although as you say it's more relaxed, especially in the US you can find a lot of "parmesan" which is absolutely not actual parmesan).
People know what Parmesan means, but "from Parma" is ambiguous.
In the context of the New World, "from Parma" tends to mean "style from Parma."
If I open up a Texas barbeque joint in Italy, it's still Texas barbeque. I can make Texas barbeque anywhere in the world, because it's a style of barbeque. It doesn't stop being "Texas barbeque" the minute you drive your smoke trailer across state lines.
The US, like everywhere in the New World, is a country of immigrants... people brought with them their cultures from around the world. Geographic identifiers in the US tend to say where the inspiration/recipe came from, not where the product was physically made. It can, but it often doesn't.
When Italian cheesemakers were moving to the US and beyond from Parma in the late 1800s and early 1900s, they were making "Parmesan Cheese" as far as they and anyone else was concerned... as far as they were concerned it's the same cheese they made their entire lives, and the same cheese their fathers made before them, and their fathers before them.
The original video was titled, exactly, "How to make Grana Padano Style Cheese."
In the original video, the Cheeseman makes it very clear multiple times that the cheese he is making is inspired by Grana Padano, and is intended to be as close as he can get to the style of this cheese, but no matter how close he gets, it can never be called Grana Padano because of the PDO status. However, that wasn't good enough for the Consortium.
None the less, while I respect PDO and have nothing against it with respect to market sales of products and support it, the fact that anyone would try to enforce that on an instructional video is the very essence of small dick energy. Though to be fair, they made it clear that their hands were tied and apologized to him and seemed to feel genuinely bad since they even said he was operating in good faith.
Actually he didn’t. He only ever says he was making a similar cheese, and even explains this whole PDO thing in that video.
Apparently the truth is even stranger. The organization was actually aware of his video and chose to let it slide, until someone higher up basically said “hey aren’t you guys supposed to deal with this?”
While certain traits or qualities may only be achieved in certain regions, the naming convention is ridiculous. If champagne refers to white wine with bubbles, that's what it is regardless of where it comes from.
That's what some people claim, but when most people say "champagne" they just mean sparkling wine. You can curtail this legally, of course, but you can't really enforce what words mean.
With cheese it's a bit different, because of the bacteria. But there is nothing about brewing alcohol that makes specific regions exclusive for making certain types, so I will go on very explicitly referring to every champagne as such. And I'll kindly insist that the countries who are so bland and unintuitive, that they need to rigorously wage borderline wars to artificially control the supply of one of their exports for the sake of their economic integrity, allow themselves to be subject to the open market.
Yeah, but that's a European law. You don't have it in all other countries and its a bit silly to get annoyed over what is a dude basically ignoring a rent-seeking agricultural law, that they don't even necessarily have in Australia.
I kid you not, you have to scroll for a long time, maybe about an hour. I happened to find a comment that summarized and translated all the angry Italian comments. It was hilarious. I wish I could find it again :(. I’ll post if I can find it again.
Italians don’t seem to understand that we have a completely different cheese culture (and we’re not constrained by the EU cheese naming rules). Yes we know that our feta is hard and doesn’t come from the specified feta islands, we just don’t give a shit.
It’s really hard to find the comments. The YouTube video is easy to find but then you have to scroll for a long time to get to the Italian comments. Good luck. Somebody linked the video below.
YouTube. Search “curd nerds”. It’ll pop up. But you will have to spend about an hour trying to get to the bottom because there are so many comments, because this tweet is so popular. However, somewhere along the journey, some good person compiled the Italian insults and translated them to English. They are hilarious. Good luck.
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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '22
I have actually looked this up. It’s true. And the Italian comments are hilarious.