First, your preference in beer isn’t scientific or particularly relevant to cheese names. Would your opinion be counted by someone who preferred a new Belgian beer as opposed to one from Belgium?
Personal preference isn’t a measure of quality.
Second, the notion that we can isolate the important parts and use them to make it again is literally how they make a cheese like emmentaler in Switzerland in a factory setting. Not all Swiss cheese makers are using ancient traditional techniques. The big makers are using the same modern techniques as anyone else, and they don’t leave the bacterial culture up to chance environmental factors because modern food production facilities are kept close to sterile.
Third, protected origins are a thing. Switzerland doesn’t care about “Swiss cheese”, it’s literally the name for the technique of preparing cheese. It could have trivially ended up being called “alpine cheese”, or “mountain cheese”. It’s defined by it’s bacterial cultures, preparation style, and aging conditions. That’s where there are multiple “Swiss cheeses” from Switzerland. The names of the proper cheese is what Switzerland wants to be protected, not the technique.
Fourth, food isn’t magic. Being possessive of a term for something from a place is fine, it’s fine for things to be associated with a location, but to say that the location itself imbues the product with an intangible property you can detect is magical thinking.
Lot of things there.
First, your preference in beer isn’t scientific or particularly relevant to cheese names. Would your opinion be counted by someone who preferred a new Belgian beer as opposed to one from Belgium?
Personal preference isn’t a measure of quality.
Second, the notion that we can isolate the important parts and use them to make it again is literally how they make a cheese like emmentaler in Switzerland in a factory setting. Not all Swiss cheese makers are using ancient traditional techniques. The big makers are using the same modern techniques as anyone else, and they don’t leave the bacterial culture up to chance environmental factors because modern food production facilities are kept close to sterile.
Third, protected origins are a thing. Switzerland doesn’t care about “Swiss cheese”, it’s literally the name for the technique of preparing cheese. It could have trivially ended up being called “alpine cheese”, or “mountain cheese”. It’s defined by it’s bacterial cultures, preparation style, and aging conditions. That’s where there are multiple “Swiss cheeses” from Switzerland. The names of the proper cheese is what Switzerland wants to be protected, not the technique.
Fourth, food isn’t magic. Being possessive of a term for something from a place is fine, it’s fine for things to be associated with a location, but to say that the location itself imbues the product with an intangible property you can detect is magical thinking.