25. A Great Cheese Named After an Awful Land Baron
Among David Jacks’ many interests was a dairy on the Salinas River. There, he produced a cheese whose origins can be traced back to Franciscan friars who had established missions in California when it was still part of the Spanish Empire. Faced with an abundance of more fresh milk than they could consume, the friars converted it into a soft and creamy light delicacy that came to be known as Queso blanco pais (white peasant cheese), or simply Queso blanco (white cheese). It became a staple diet of California’s Spanish-speaking settlers.
Jacks became a partner in 14 of Northern California’s biggest dairies. Like the Franciscans, he converted surplus milk into Queso blanco, which he marketed as “Jacks Cheese”. It proved to be a great crossover product, the Anglos liked it, and before long, the white cheese was popular throughout the West Coast. People asked for it by name, and eventually “Monterey Jack” displaced Queso blanco as the white creamy cheese’s name. Nowadays, daily production of Monterey Jack is in the tens of thousands of pounds, and it accounts for ten percent of all of California’s cheese production.
