The local story behind the country’s proudest cheese is hard to slice.

{ FOOD&WINE }

The story of Monterey Jack has all the trappings of a great Steinbeck novel: migrant families, a rich land baron, tensions between ranchers and workers, struggle, injury and loss, all set against the natural environment of Monterey County. It’s part history, part legend. It tells the tale of the county’s original pioneers, and how our community came to be what it is today.

Finally, it is wrought with mystery and intrigue – and offers no definitive truth.

“As a historian I would like to be able to say, ‘This is the best evidence,’ ” says Dennis Copeland, Monterey Public Library archivist and historian. “I’m in a quandary. But it’s a fascinating story.”

According to legend, early forms of the cheese have been around for centuries. The mild, straightforward, pale yellow goodness that we know today has ancestors that date back to the Italian cheese that fed Caesar’s armies. A 1973 column in the Herald says Roman soldiers carried the cheese to Majorca, and then to Spain. (Would it be a stretch to tie Caesar’s conquests in Gaul to the cheese? Probably not.) In the 18th century, Spanish Franciscans who arrived in Monterey, by way of Mexico, brought the cheese to California. They called it queso del pais, or country cheese, and it caught on amongst the early Monterey farmers and ranchers.

Then the story gets controversial. No one knows exactly who gets credit for inventing the cheese called Monterey Jack. Some credit Doña Juana Cota de Boronda, the matriarch of an original Mexican Land Grant family. Others say Domingo Pedrazzi, a Swiss-Italian dairyman, should receive the honor. And then there’s the name everyone knows: David Jacks, a Scottish businessman who would become one of the largest landowners and richest men in Monterey County.

Historians agree that the cheese was around long before Jacks.

“Pretty much everybody knows the type of cheese they call Monterey Jack cheese was around before David Jacks,” says Jim Conway, museum coordinator for the city of Monterey and author of Monterey: Presidio, Pueblo and Port.

“I’m interested in why this story is important and what it means to Monterey,” Conway continues. “The bottom line is everybody in the world knows what Monterey Jack cheese is, and it promotes Monterey. Monterey Jack cheese is part of the whole heritage tourism that’s going on. I don’t care it you’re in Boston, New York, or Charleston, you can buy jack cheese. It’s helped give an identity to Monterey. And it came along even before the wine.”

But when asked to pick his version of the Monterey Jack truth, Conway clams up. He won’t go there – not even after I bribe him with a Monterey Jack quesadilla. Perhaps it’s because he prefers his jack melted on a cracker, as opposed to a tortilla, with hot sauce.

“It’s like any mystery,” says Copeland, who likes his jack straight up: sliced, at room temperature, with a good bottle of wine. “You have several clues, but they are not definitive. It’s like a puzzle you’re still trying to piece together. Plus it has this strong connection to Monterey and people are fascinated by the romance of old Monterey. And they are all wonderful, rich stories.”

But, he admits, “I’m in favor of the Doña Juana Cota de Boronda story. She made the queso del pais originally, and perhaps David Jacks was involved with marketing it.”