{"id":3222,"date":"2025-07-24T04:25:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T04:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/monterey-jack-an-original-american-cheese-with-a-very-curious-history\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T04:25:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T04:25:09","slug":"monterey-jack-an-original-american-cheese-with-a-very-curious-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/monterey-jack-an-original-american-cheese-with-a-very-curious-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Monterey Jack: An Original American Cheese with a Very Curious History"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Editor\u2019s note:<\/em> <\/em><\/strong>This story is an expanded version of the authors vignette “Monterey Jack: Cheese Creation Myths” published in\u00a0<\/em>Secret Monterey: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful and Obscure<\/a>\u00a0by Reedy Press in 2022.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"Schoch

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Schoch Jack photo credit Schoch Family Farmstead<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

An annual listing of the Best U.S. Cities for Cheese Lovers<\/a> released on National Cheese Lover\u2019s Day 2023 ranked Salinas, California, dead last with zero points. It notes, \u201cironically, this city is located in Monterey County, where Monterey Jack traces its origins.\u201d But with a methodology that includes the number of Cheesecake Factory restaurants per square mile, this result has to be treated with some disdain.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It did, however, intrigue me enough to research the origins of the eponymous cheese. A few hours digging into the files of the California History Room in the Monterey Public Library revealed this as a topic of perennial local interest. That interest is piqued by the number of competing stories, personalities, and nationalities that vie for a slice of the Jack cheese legacy. Or should it be jack cheese?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"Scottish<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

The Simple Origin Story <\/strong><\/h2>\n

In the late 1700s, Franciscan padres at Mission San Carlos near Carmel on California\u2019s Monterey Peninsula created a semi-firm cow\u2019s milk cheese with a creamy, mild flavor and high moisture content that became a staple of the local farming community. Scottish immigrant David Jacks<\/a> arrived in Monterey during the early days of the Gold Rush and amassed an empire of dairies. When the railroad arrived, he started exporting cheese to San Francisco and beyond. Labeled \u201cJacks Monterey Cheese,\u201d it soon became known as Monterey Jack.<\/p>\n

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The More Complicated Origin Story <\/strong><\/h2>\n
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\"The

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The Boronda dairy adobe before restoration.\u00a0 Photo: Mayo Hayes O’Donnell Library<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jose Manuel Boronda raised cattle on\u00a0 Rancho Los Laureles<\/a> near today\u2019s Carmel Valley Village. After an accident left him unable to work, his wife started selling a queso del pais <\/em>(country-style cheese) to raise money to feed the <\/em>family. Following a process she learned from family members in Aragon, Spain, Do\u00f1a Boronda placed the curds in a sack and wrung it to squeeze out the liquid. A weighted plank atop the sack flattened the cheese into a wheel of the desired thickness.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The family claimed that David Jacks purchased cheese from the Borondas, copied the recipe, and sold it under his name. As Jacks was widely reviled in the region for his cutthroat business practices, this version enjoys a broad following.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A Different Origin Story <\/strong><\/h2>\n
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\"Hotel

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Hotel del Monte from Beauties of California (1883)<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Railroad baron Charles Crocker built the Hotel Del Monte<\/a> in Monterey as a playground for the rich and famous in 1880. His Pacific Improvement Company acquired the Boronda Adobe property to supply butter and cheese to hotel guests. Instead of using a weighted plank to flatten the cheese, the dairy manager squeezed it with a jack \u2013 a device used to support sagging house beams.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After the Pebble Beach Company purchased the hotel in 1915, the founder S. F. B. Morse, offered another twist. He claimed that Domingo Pedrazzi, a Swiss Italian dairyman, developed a Jack variety sold as Del Monte Cheese that also used the house jack press. So now we have two origin stories of jack cheese spelled with a lowercase \u201cj\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Portuguese Origin Stories <\/strong><\/h2>\n
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\"Jack

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Jack cheese press at Point Lobos photo credit<\/em> David Laws<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

From the 1860s through the \u201880s, Portuguese whalers harpooned whales, hauled them to shore, and processed oil at what is today Point Lobos State Natural Reserve. Many lived on small family farms scattered along the rugged Big Sur coast. Manuel Jose Rodrigues and his wife Maria, who learned to make cheese from her mother in the Azores islands, raised dairy cows near Palo Colorado Canyon. Descendants of the family claim that David Jacks acted as Maria\u2019s agent to sell her cheese as Monterey Jack in San Francisco.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another Azorean family, the Vierra\u2019s, made cheese at Point Lobos. Mrs. Vierra gave her cheese recipe to her neighbor Mrs. Victorine. The Victorines opened a dairy in Watsonville that failed. One of their employees then moved on to work for David Jacks, taking the recipe with him. A jack press used at the Point Lobos Dairy in the early 1900s is displayed in the Whaler\u2019s Cabin Museum<\/a> on the Reserve.<\/p>\n

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Enter the Italians <\/strong><\/h2>\n
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\"Mori<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

Italian immigrant, Stefano Mori, arrived in San Francisco in 1888 and opened an inn that enjoyed a notorious reputation during Prohibition. His restaurant was also noted for a cheese made following a recipe from his homeland. The Pacifica Historical Society claims that a family friend stole Mori\u2019s recipe and went to work for David Jacks, and raised funds by selling \u201cPacifica Jack, California\u2019s original jack cheese.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Monterey Jack Today <\/strong><\/h2>\n
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\"\"

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Kent Torrey serves Schoch Jack photo credit David Laws<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At the beginning of the 20th century, hundreds of Monterey County dairies made Jack cheese. Even as it became one of the nation\u2019s most popular varieties, diary land became more valuable for crop production, and farmers switched to growing strawberries and produce. Today seventy percent of the nation\u2019s lettuce is grown in the Salinas Valley, but 99% of Jack is made in giant factories far away.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Just one dairy in the county, the Schoch Family Farmstead of Salinas<\/a> established in 1944, produces Monterey Jack commercially.\u00a0Schoch makes several styles of cheese, but its artisan Jack is a favorite at The Cheese Shop<\/a> in Carmel-by-the-Sea, where president and CEO (Cheese Eating Oenophile) Kent Torrey regales customers with his preferred origin story \u2013 he backs the hapless Do\u00f1a Boronda. The Schoch\u2019s cheese is made by hand and unlike most commercial jack, has a rind and like the origin story of jack cheese, is far from bland.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s note: This story is an expanded version of the authors vignette “Monterey Jack: Cheese Creation Myths” published in\u00a0Secret Monterey: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful and Obscure\u00a0by Reedy Press in 2022.\u00a0 Schoch Jack photo credit Schoch Family Farmstead An annual listing of the Best U.S. Cities for Cheese Lovers released on National Cheese Lover\u2019s … Okumaya devam et “Monterey Jack: An Original American Cheese with a Very Curious History”<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1271,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[395],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-milk-and-diary"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}