GRUYERE CHEESE IS GRUYERE CHEESE…EVEN IN THE UNITED STATES

On March 3^rd, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Virginia upheld a ruling that cheese labeled GRUYERE can be used to legally describe cheese made from outside the Gruyere region of Switzerland and France.  It said “Cheese – regardless of its location of production – has been labelled and sold as Gruyere in America for decades.”

The Court also stated that groups from France and Switzerland “cannot overcome what the record makes clear: cheese consumers in the United States understand “GRUYERE to refer to a type of cheese, which renders the term generic”.