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Let’s start with a language lesson:
Grana is a style of hard, salty cheese, typically made in Italy, that you might use to grate over pasta or eat by the chunk.
Parmigiano-Reggiano is a type of grana cheese made according to strict regulations, and only in five provinces around Italy’s Po River Valley. The producers of Parmigiano-Reggiano are members of the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium.
And Parmesan, the term most of us put on our shopping lists, is a word these Italian cheesemakers would like to erase from the American vocabulary.
You’re right to be confused. I too have spent my life colloquially referring to everything from the cheese I ate in Parma itself to the Kraft stuff that comes pre-grated in a canister as “Parmesan.” It’s what American producers BelGioioso and Polly-O call their products, and what any server asks if you’d like sprinkled on your spaghetti and meatballs. But the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium views this as tantamount to deceit, a way to swindle innocent consumers into buying an inferior product. And the group has a plan to stop it.
This is easy enough in the EU; Parmigiano-Reggiano is registered with a protected designation of origin, which creates government regulation and protection around food and wine products in order to preserve their traditions. In 2008 the European Court of Justice ruled that any cheese labeled “Parmesan” must be made in Italy, and in 2019 the consortium said it “strongly combats misusage of the term ‘parmesan’ to describe cheeses which are not the genuine Parmigiano-Reggiano.” But this is America, baby! You can’t tell us what to do! So, in an attempt to lock down its hegemony, the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium is turning to that most American of enterprises: branding.
Late last year, Parmigiano-Reggiano got itself a talent agent. As the Hollywood Reporter announced, the consortium signed with United Talent Agency, which historically has represented people like actors, screenwriters, and athletes (you know, humans) to “further its message of gastronomical excellence and high quality ingredients, production and distribution,” likely through things like product placement in entertainment. The Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium did not respond to my request for comment, but a food product having its own talent agent is a rarity, or perhaps unheard of, in the world of media—when I asked another agent friend about the alliance, she said it had been the talk of the office, with her colleagues joking that they should sign pecorino in retaliation.
This isn’t the consortium’s only maneuver. In September, news broke that Parmigiano-Reggiano was entering a strategic partnership with the New York Jets, a real “matcha Pilates in Bali before a Labubu rave” situation. Per a press release, “The iconic PDO cheese producer hopes to grow brand recognition overseas and meaningfully connect with American consumers” and promises “activations” at MetLife stadium, like antipasto stations and a “Cheesy Dance Cam.” And is it just me, or is every restaurant suddenly touting pasta tossed in massive wheels of cheese, mostly with the signature Parmigiano Reggiano stamped in black on the side? It’s in every city, inescapable. Influencers are even doing it in their own homes, as if this is how Nonna threw down back in the day.
A 2015 survey conducted by the consortium claimed that “two thirds of U.S. consumers are deceived by the term ‘parmesan’ ”: Most Americans believe Parmesan to be a hard cheese from Italy, and yet they are often buying generic “Parmesan” from elsewhere. By conscripting a talent agency and blasting its name across NFL jumbotrons, Parmigiano-Reggiano is attempting to influence Americans’ understanding of what Parmesan means, arguably for the better. Even if there are some casualties along the way.
Authenticity is a powerful word in food, and a murky one. Authentic to whom? To when? Though the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium invokes “a thousand years of history,” the regulations around its production appeared relatively recently. A group of producers overseeing the industry was created in the 1930s, and “the EU legislation regulating these kinds of products is from 1992,” says Fabio Parasecoli, author of Al Dente: A History of Food in Italy and a professor of food and nutrition at New York University. “At that point, regulators tried to take a snapshot of what the production was. But of course the production has changed over time,” and, Parasecoli notes, the PDO specifications allow it to continue to adapt as technology and climate continue to influence the industry, as long as all the producers agree that those changes will still produce a superior product. So, rather than an unchanging product, what the consortium is really attempting to protect is a brand name.
Adam Moskowitz, a cheese importer and creator of the Cheesemonger Invitational, is thrilled with this PR push. “I am so tired of correcting people that Parmesan is not Parmigiano-Reggiano,” he says. He agrees with the consortium that anyone producing “Parmesan” is disingenuous on some level, trying to use the association of the word with an Italian product and culture to boost sales, even if unconsciously. He has no problem if an American producer wants to make a grana-style cheese, he says. “Just call it something else.”
Easier said than done, though, because American-made “Parmesan” actually has quite a long history, and one that’s defined not just by the green shaker bottle from Kraft. Recently, Italian historian Alberto Grandi made waves by claiming that Parmesan from Wisconsin is more “authentic” than that from Italy. “If you want to eat the original Parmigiano like our great-grandparents used to eat, you should go to Milwaukee or Madison,” he said in an interview in the Financial Times. That’s because in the late 19th century, Italian immigrants settled in America’s dairy country and began producing cheese like they had back home.
It’s not quite true that Wisconsin Parmesan is more “authentic” than its Italian counterpart—it too changed over time to meet local preferences. But regardless, it’s undeniable that America has a century-old tradition of producing cheese called Parmesan. According to Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin, if the state were a country, it would be the fourth-largest producer of cheese in the world; it produces nearly 3.5 billion pounds of cheese a year. America also produces about 41.5 million pounds of Parmesan a year, of which Wisconsin produces just more than half.
“I do believe Parmigiano-Reggiano and American Parmesan can coexist,” says Tony Hook, founder of Hook’s Cheese in Wisconsin. Hook produces only about 2,000 pounds of Parmesan annually (out of the 500,000 pounds of cheese Hook produces in total), something he says he started because customers started asking about it at the farmers market. “We decided to give it a try and thought ours were pretty good,” he says. “Parmigiano from Italy, I always expect it to be very good, but I don’t really think they should have a concern about us taking over their market.”
Hook understands the importance of the PDO label—he makes a Roquefort-style cheese that he has named Little Boy Blue, because the name Roquefort is protected. “But for just the title of Parmesan, I don’t think it holds up,” he says. He doesn’t call his cheese Parmigiano-Reggiano, and he says his customers understand that it’s made in Wisconsin and not in Italy, something the packaging also makes clear with its “Wisconsin Cheese” label. If customers are buying Wisconsin-made Parmesan, it’s not because they think it’s Italian. It’s because they know it’s American.
The problem that Parmigiano-Reggiano faces is one of value; it wants American consumers not just to understand that its product is a specific cheese made in a specific way in a specific place, but to value those specificities above others. “You just look at where cheddar is as a word, and you can see why this is important,” says Moskowitz, referring to the fact that cheddar cheese is almost entirely disconnected from its association with the village of Cheddar, whence the style of cheese originated. It’s not just that Parmigiano-Reggiano believes that the word Parmesan denotes an Italian product; through its publicity and lobbying efforts, it wants to make that true.
But Parmigiano-Reggiano’s PR blitz also highlights that American cheese isn’t just a matter of “processed cheese food” and pre-grated shakers. American cheesemakers are increasingly competing on the international stage. “In the U.S., there is a lot of focus on producers, you know, ‘I’m getting my cheese from Jasper Hill,’ ” says Parasecoli. The producers, he says, “are the innovators.” And those cheeses are increasingly receiving global acclaim. Last year, an American-made cheddar was named the best American cheese, and the fifth-best cheese in the world at the World Cheese Awards. In 2019 Rogue River Blue, a Roquefort-style cheese produced in Oregon, became the first American cheese to win the top spot (beating out a 24-month-aged Parmigiano-Reggiano).
Legally, Parmigiano-Reggiano may one day prevail—it has already prevented Kraft from trademarking the product “Kraft Parmesan Cheese” in Ecuador. And the consortium’s publicity push will definitely make more Americans familiar with the details of the cheese’s production, however cringe a “Cheesy Dance Cam” may be. But if it works, it’ll be because many Americans are already primed to understand cheese as a product connected to specific locations and techniques and to value that production, wherever it happens. And, well, we love a celebrity. Bring on the movie cameos.