The Fight for Tilsit

There may not be very many wars in Europe anymore, but there are still quite a number of fights between Europeans. Often, they're about cheese.

The Italians fight the Germans over Parmigiano. The Greeks fight the Bulgarians over Feta, and the French, too. The French also fight each other over Camembert.

Now, the Swiss are battling it out with the Russians over Tilsit. It's just the latest skirmish in the never-ending debate: "What's in a name?"

The issue in all these cases involve various local and E.U. rules, which assert control over which European country or region can use particular food names. So, for example, the good people of Parma, Italy lodge a complaint when German producers want to call a dairy product Parmigiano, without so much as a sprechen sie deutsche on the label.

There are big bucks involved -- the marketing value of real cheese versus fake cheese is immense -- so these kinds of squabbles keep coming.

The latest one, over Tilsit, is kind of funny. Tilsit, or Tilsiter, is an historic German variety, hailing originally from Prussia. Somewhere along the way, cheesemakers in Switzerland and many other countries starting making the stuff.

Fast forward to the present, and the Russians are coming. So the leading Swiss Tilsit-making farm, the Holzhof farm, is renaming itself Tilsit. Since the original town in Germany is no longer called Tilsit, the Swiss reckon that they can just grab the name for themselves, thus blocking the Russians from using it.

Sound confusing? Read on here to learn more.