Cheese: This is a product that comes from a cow (or other animals) that is chowing down on local grasses (usually) that are grown from the soil. It is well known that great cheeses display their respective terroir.
Wine: This is the fermented product that comes from grapes grown on a grapevine that is grown on the soil. It is also well known that great wines display their respective terroir.
So both products come from a very analogous process…a product arising indirectly from a connection to the soil.
In the case of great wine, we know that the vine must struggle, be grown at the limits of its survivability. This is why you can’t make great wine in the Central Vlly. The vines have too much water, too much fertile soil, they’re too fat & happy for their own good to make great wines. The great wines are grown from marginal climates, where the vines must struggle to survive. You see the pictures of these old vines, gnarly & ugly, struggling to survive. These are where the great wines come from, this is the image we see behind the great wines.
In the case of great cheeses, we know that the cows must be contented, fat & happy, feeding on these lush green alpine grasses, looking at us w/ these soulful brown eyes, munching away on her cud. Cows that are well-cared for and given their every wish. Have you ever seen the image of an emaciated/scrawny/starving/bone sticking out cow and told this is the source of the greatest cheeses??
So the images we have for what it takes to make great cheese and what it takes to make great wines are exactly out of whack…totally the opposite of one another.
Anybody have an idea why this dichotomy between wine & cheese and our perception of what it takes to make great wine/cheese that displays their respective terroir?? Why can’t a starved/emaciated cow result in great cheese? Or does anybody care or ever thought about it??
This question was alluded to in MarkMatthews book on his discussion of terroir and got me thinking.
Good question. I asked a similar one a couple of years ago about fruits and vegetables. No one would claim that the best fruit (for eating) comes from bad farmland. Or maybe it does, and no one has really tried - because all the crappy farmland was given over to growing vines centuries ago.
Well, first of all a starved cow/sheep/goat won’t produce milk, or at least very much of it. Second, the bacteria that live in the digestive tracts of the animals need a constant source of food to reproduce and provide nutrients back to the animal.
Cheese is made by animals, wine is made by plants. I think it is possibly a stretch to compare the effects of their emotional and moral struggles on the quality of their fermentable output.
Well, Pat…we know that the grapes w/ the smallest berries produce the greatest wines. Why wouldn’t the tiny amount of milk produced by a starved
cow be much more concentrated and produce the most flavorful milk??
Why for cows, the production of a large volume of milk is good…but for grapevines the large berries is bad???
While the grass and the health of the cows is important to make good cheese, the terroir element is actually coming from the specific micro-biological conditions of the area: i.e. The yeasts and bacteria floating in the area and so it’s not really a direct comparison to make. Also, plants that are stressed in general tend to modify their metabolism and produce more complex, differentiated metabolites and products of synthesis: the idea is to focus on producing organic chemicals that may help in withstanding stress or perhaps are products of incomplete synthesis and require less energy. Less stressed plants can focus on maximum sugar and seed production etc… Animals need to be healthy to produce a resource that is not for their own use.
Yeah, but…Howard…cows do feed on the grasses that may have deeper roots and better mineral/flavor transport. It is well known
that the flavor of the cheese is greatly impacted by the plants/grasses they’re feeding upon.
Tom
I would think Pat’s point is pretty self evident. I would think a staved animals body would shut down producing anything that doesn’t directly keep it alive. I’m not sure a large production of milk is better tasting than a average amount but I would suspect both are better than coming from an animal on the verge of starvation.
An interesting question, Tom, and interesting thoughts from others.
I’m not sure it’s quite as simple with cheese as ‘happy, healthy cows produce a lot of good milk that makes the best cheese.’
There are people think that Parmigiano-Reggiano was degraded when cheesemakers switched from the vacco rosso to more productive Holstein cows and began producing milk and cheese year-round on the flatlands. There are artisanal producers in the Appennines who use the red cows and graze them on hillside pastures (I saw small herds above Parma on a visit in 2003). So maybe healthy but not overmilked cows not overstuffed with farmed grain produces the best Parmesan. (I guess the winter cheese is inferior because the cows eat silage or poor quality grass.)
In general the proverbial Alpine meadows are at the limits of grass production, I think. So maybe that’s another point where the stress works to yield a more interesting product.
Plus, as others have said, it’s not just the milk that’s important – it’s the microbial environment of the dairy.
Maybe your characterization is a little off.
It’s not about suffering versus contentedness. It’s about production.
The prevailing belief is that better wine comes from vines that produce less - less fluid - usually due to limited water.
The model that is suggested is that the vine is limited in how much “grape stuff” it can produce so less fluid means greater concentration of “grape stuff”
The question is whether or not this is analogous to cows.
Do cows that produce less produce better (more concentrated/more flavorful) wine ?
Do cows have a limit on how much “milk stuff” they can produce ?
Are the cows controlled as to how much water they consume ?
A cow, ITB of milk, will usually live for five years. Then it’s slaughtered, and eaten.
Imagine a natural cow, at 25 years (max. natural age), still producing milk.
I have never seen “Fromage à partir de tres vieilles vaches”, and I really don’t think the cheese, will be better.
But I like to see the “Tres vieilles vignes” on the wine label. Here it vouches for concentrated, complex, and scarce (rare) grapes, nursed for ages.
There are differences in fat and protein contents, of diff. cow races. And therefor also diff. in the taste of the raw milk, used for cheese productions. -But they all need good living, to produce the good milk.
The diff. flavors, also comes from what they are consuming (fed), of course.
I like old (matured) hard cheeses, like Gruyere, 5 years +, from cool Swiss mountain caves, and “old” cheddars too.
Parmesan experiments has shown that 10 years maturing, or more, is no problem for these quality cheeses. (Very hard to find for sale, sadly).
Really, Soren??? I wasn’t aware that dairy cattle made up part of our food stream.
I’m from Kansas and still have cow$hit on my shoes…but really don’t know a whole lot
about cows. It’s udderly outside my area of expertise.
Tom
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