Fate of true camembert in doubt

The Telegraph ^ | 6/7/2007 | Henry Samuel in Lessay

[snowsislander]

I´m in Europe. It´s just, that whenever I´m in the US, I don´t see any good domestic cheese. I´m sure that there are some excellent regional products, but I´m wondering why they´re not sold nation-wide.

It's a reasonable question.

For nation-wide distribution, I believe that Iowa's Maytag Blue is sold nationally, and it is a good blue cheese.

[PBRSTREETGANG]

Maytag is one of my favorite blue cheeses. I always have some on hand.

If you like it, try Point Reyes Blue out of California also.

[norton]

UCLA has a campus in Disneyland?

[RightWhale]

It’s marketing. Mass production. American Industrial Revolution for everything including cheese. Vast quantities of cheap stuff of functional quality.

[caveat emptor]

I´m sure that there are some excellent regional products, but I´m wondering why they´re not sold nation-wide.

I'm an American, from the deep South (Alabama-Georgia, Sherman's March country) but have lived in the western US and Canada for the past 50 years. The last place I've eaten Vermont cheddar is in San Francisco, some 2500 miles (4000 km) from Montpelier, Vermont. No other American cheeses that I ate there have stayed in memory.

Is it that your meat is so good that the American consumer simply doesn´t need cheese

I don't eat meat, so I won't comment.

The eating of exotic foods and fine wines is a luxury to available for mass consumption only in wealthy countries, and you'd likely be grateful for a bit of soup and a shot of cheap vodka to go with your crust of bread in the "German Democratic Republic" had the US not provided money for reconstruction and protection from the USSR after WWII.

The US is a young country, Arizona becoming the last of the contiguous states in 1912, and was relatively poor, on average, until well after the end of WWII. Much of the area where I grew up was still mired in poverty when I moved away in 1957 -"Reconstruction" for the South had been a bitter joke after Lee's surrender at Appomattox.