{ 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.”

• • •

Dennis Boronda, a descendant of the original cheese maker, remembers listening to the story growing up. His great-great aunt is Doña Boronda. “The Borondas came from a northeastern region of Spain called Aragon, and they did have a recipe that was supposedly brought over,” he says.

“The original Boronda, Manuel Boronda, came to California in 1769 with the Fr. Junipero Serra and Gaspar de Portola,” he adds. A corporal in the Spanish army, Manuel Boronda was appointed by the governor to be the first schoolteacher in San Francisco, and then in Monterey. He moved onto a 14-acre parcel of land behind the Royal Presidio Chapel and built the Boronda Adobe of Monterey.

In 1840, the governor gave a generous wedding gift to José Manuel Boronda, the son of Manuel Boronda and his new wife Juana Cota of Santa Barbara: some 6,625 acres of Los Laureles property in Carmel Valley, where one of the county’s three Boronda adobes still stands.

Later, the family fell upon hard times.

“José Manuel Boronda was injured in a bull fight,” Dennis Boronda says. “I heard he lost his leg. He couldn’t run a ranch anymore. The family had all of those kids – 15. She had to make money to support the family so she started making that cheese. She used a jack to press the cheese.”

And from this jack – according to some – Monterey Jack was born.

Old newspaper clippings tells stories of Doña Boronda selling cheese to her neighbors, door to door. She “made a name for herself and her cheese,” writes Blair Merbs, in a 1983 Herald Weekend Magazine story. Apparently no one could resist the delicious queso del pais, David Jacks included.

A shrewd businessman and a wealthy landowner, Jacks, who owned 60,000 acres of land and 14 dairy ranches, realized the cheese’s potential and had the resources to exploit it. Some say he stamped his name across the crates used to ship the cheese.

Real California Cheese tells it this way on its website: “As the story goes, sometime in 1882 David Jacks began shipping from his dairies a cheese branded with his last name and the city of origin, Monterey, to San Francisco and other western markets. Eventually the ‘s’ was dropped and people began asking for ‘Monterey Jack.’ ”

“At the time,” says Boronda, “Jacks was helping Doña Boronda out, selling the cheese. But it seemed that at some point he realized, ‘Hey, this is really a good deal here.’ He was a businessman and he knew how to market it. The family probably got mad at him – I would think they would – but they probably weren’t going to do anything about it. They weren’t trying to get rich. They just wanted to keep the family going.”

• • •

Another famous local, pioneer Samuel Morse, told a different tale. In an 1948 letter, Morse writes, “None of the Jacks family had anything to do with [the cheese] as far as I know.”

According to Morse, in the early 1890s Domingo Pedrazzi, a Swiss-Italian dairyman in Carmel Valley, originated jack cheese. “He developed a type of cheese that required the application of pressure,” Morse wrote. “He developed a fine cheese, and it became known as Pedrazzi’s jack cheese. You will note that the name is ‘jack,’ not ‘Jacks.’

Morse wrote that Ed Hatton continued to make the cheese using milk from the Hatton Dairy for years. It was later sold under the name of Del Monte Cheese.

• • •

“We do know they were making cheese there called Del Monte Cheese,” Copeland says, realizing that this further complicates the story of the one true cheesemaker.

“I guess I go back to: take your choice,” he says. “Who knows? We do know that there was a cheese and that the early Californianos had the cheese. I tend to believe maybe David Jacks had dairies marketing it and his name across it. I think it says something that this cheese has some deep root here. It’s definitely a Monterey-area cheese and there are a lot of well-known pioneer families involved.

“It’s a continuing story – the never-ending story of a cheese. And maybe we don’t need a definitive answer. Maybe we need to leave people guessing and enjoy it.”

Enjoy it – with a fruity Riesling. Or maybe melted on a baguette. Or combined with zesty peppers or tangy dill. The possibilities, much like the stories surrounding the cheese, are endless.