'Swiss' is an Americanisation of what are superb products. So where are these world class cheesemakers in the USA? I adore cheese ('proper' cheese, that is, not mass produced tasteless rubbish), yet never see any in your restaurants or food outlets. Must be very local.As for beer, well, I do enjoy a glass of Anchor Steam or Sam Adams, but 'finest in the world'??
You have heard of places like Belgium and Germany have you?
Go to a specialty cheese store in any large American city and start sampling (hint: if they don't give out samples, find another cheese store). You'll be surprised. Lately I've been enjoying blue cheese from Rogue Creamery, Point Reyes, and (an old favorite) Maytag in Iowa. Carr Valley has a nice 4- and 5-year old cheddar, if you're into the Wisconsin thing.
WRT beer: I have drunk a lot of beer in Germany, Belgium, and the United Kingdom. I've drunk gueze so sour it could strip paint in a little cafe in Bruegel country. I've sampled four wonderful stouts from small breweries in Hereford (only a pound a pint) when the rest of the pub was drinking alcopops and American Budweiser. I've spent any number of evenings arguing with Germans that Budvar and Pilsner Urquell were superior to any of their pilsners.
Find me a German or Czech pils as good as Victory Prima Pils from Downingtown, Pa.
Find me a Belgian beer as inventive as Mo Betta Bretta from Pizza Port in Solana Beach, Cal.
American brewers brew every style in the world, from mild to doppelbock. Try to find a cask-conditioned ale in Germany, or a decent British-brewed bock.
I'll grant you that the average beer in Europe is better than the average beer in the U.S., and probably that's also true of cheese (I don't remember particularly falling in love with the cheese at Sainsbury or Tesco). In fact, I mentioned that in my original post. My point was that in these fields, as in much of American culture, the really excellent (and often small and local) products are obscured by the vast sea of mediocre industrial production.
Obligatory train content: the Empire Builder wine tasting does use Minnesota cheese (from Faribault, I believe). Sorry, Wisconsin. I just wish that the lounge car had a few bottles of Great Northern Porter, brewed in St. Paul a few hundred yards from the Empire Builder's route.
