Gruyère

The town of Gruyères sits in the canton of Fribourg in western Switzerland. It has about 2,200 residents and a medieval castle. The cheese that bears its name is one of the most produced and consumed cheeses in the world. The first recorded mention of Gruyère cheese dates to 1115 CE, in a document from the priory of Rougemont. The cheese was already a trade commodity in the twelfth century, when the Count of Gruyère collected it as tax.

Gruyère is a hard, yellow cheese with a complex, nutty flavor that intensifies with age. It melts smoothly and evenly, making it the standard cheese for fondue, French onion soup, and croque-monsieur. The production requires raw cow's milk, animal rennet, and specific bacterial cultures. Each wheel weighs about 35 kilograms and ages for a minimum of five months. The cheese has no holes — or rather, it has very small, sparse holes, unlike the cartoon Swiss cheese (which is Emmental).

The name fight was international. Switzerland has protected the Gruyère name since 2001 within its borders. France argued that Gruyère was a generic term for any cheese of a certain type, as France makes its own Gruyère in the Franche-Comté region. In 2011, both Swiss Gruyère AOP and French Gruyère IGP received EU protection. In the United States, a 2022 federal court ruled that 'gruyere' (lowercase) is generic in America — any cheese can call itself gruyere. The Swiss were not pleased.

The court ruling split the word in two. In Europe, Gruyère is a protected designation. In America, gruyere is a type of cheese. The same word has different legal statuses depending on which side of the Atlantic you are standing on. A Swiss village's name became a generic adjective in the country that buys the most cheese.