Excellence versus perfection

« If life were perfect, you wouldn’t have to live it! »  This is my mantra. It is what makes life interesting and even though I am sometimes seduced by the idea of perfection, as an interior designer and a project director for over 30 years, I have seen my fair share of designers painstakingly search for a perfect design solution, a perfect detail, a perfect whatever, to no avail!  One person’s perfection is another’s imperfection.  A far better and more satisfying option has always been to search for the expression of excellence.

Interior design/architecture has always been about being in the middle, being the bridge between a myriad of disciplines – client, architects, engineers, cost consultants, constructors, providers and suppliers, all sorts of points of view and visions; where the most oft heard statement is “my idea is the only idea!”.  Being the designer in the middle has always meant having to be inquisitive, creative, open, flexible and modest but above all respectful of all the various competing egos that make up a team.

So recently when a former colleague asked me to look at an addition to her CV that would explain why she was the appropriate candidate for an exciting new job, I got to thinking about perfection versus excellence. While the job was outside her discipline, it was by no means outside of her capabilities and expertise.  She has always been able to produce creative design ideas; recognized projects, cost effective solutions and well run project teams. In other words, she has always been able to create and foster excellence from a diverse and sometime disparate group of players.

Every job, every client, every team varies from the others for all sorts of reasons.  So why would this new discipline be different or more difficult for this talented designer/team leader than any other new project for her to be successful?  It wouldn’t!  The ability, passion and desire to create and foster excellence are the most important ingredients in any successful endeavour  not the perfect candidate.

So you ask, what does any of this have to do with cheese?  Cheese, like interior design, is no different; it is the ultimate team effort.  The environment, the animal, the cheese maker, the process, the production, the ageing, the selection are all part of this search to produce an excellent example of a cheese.  No not a perfect one because that can never exist, except perhaps in the mind (or mouth) of the beholder!  Each one of them is different, unique, an exploration and expression of that cheese with those particular elements led by that specific person at that time and place.  No two cheeses will ever be the same. And yet when all these different elements are led in unison towards excellence, the recipient – us - will have an excellent example in our possession to savour. And we can be grateful for all of the effort that "team leader" took to perfect excellence.

Cheese - the soul of the earth

 

ter·roir 

[French ter-wahr / ter' wa] noun

The conditions in which a foodstuff is grown or produced giving the food its unique characteristics. 

The French Ministry of Agriculture definition : a combination of land specificity and human savoir-faire.   

Origin: French: literally, 'soil, land', from Medieval Latin terratorium 

In France, this mythical word represents simply the land. And yet, it is more than the soil and climate or geological and hydrological conditions. It is the quintessence of agriculture, the combination of geography, people and culture. While the meaning has been greatly debated across the wine world as to whether it is a real factor or not, in the art of cheese, it is self-evident. This is not an elitist concept; rather it is a respect for the locality, the history and the people who create the product. 

With cheese in France, as with many other artisanal products here, these elements of tradition can be traced to when people were isolated from one another and other communities. With their particular climate, the vegetal species, the race of their animals and the chemical structure of their milk and personal interaction, individuals in small communities began to produce products particular to their region; each exhibiting differences in taste, in texture and in shape. 

Terroir represents locality, continuity and consistency which we find in region specific cheeses. Each of them provides us with a vision of the cultural diversity of their area as well as the shared habits of the local people and their interaction with the surrounding environment. We come to realize that "terroir is all about human intervention."  

Terroir represents locality, continuity and consistency which we find in region specific cheeses. Each of them provides us with a vision of the cultural diversity of their area as well as the shared habits of the local people and their interaction with the surrounding environment. We come to realize that "terroir is all about human intervention." 

Interactive map

To codify this combination of the basic identity, the knowledge it represents and to help preserve the regional specificity of a group of categories of foods, produce, wine and cheese, the French developed a system known as l’Appelation d’Origine Controllée (AOC). The process is in-depth and exacting. It documents the essence of the cheese: its historical framework, the its agricultural dictates such as breed of animal, location, vegetation and all the processes used to create the cheese. 

The process attempts to define, if not the soul of a cheese, its roots. The first AOC cheese to be protected by this status was Roquefort in 1925. Currently 46 cheeses have l’Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée designation in France; 29 cow, 14 goat and 3 sheep milk cheeses. There hundreds more French cheeses which display unique regionality and typicity.  There are some fun websites that let you view the regions and their associated AOC cheeses, which you click on a region and the AOC cheeses will come up. 

The European Union has used it as the basis of an EU wide programme – l’Appellation d'Origine Protégée (AOP) which is of similar scope and more stringent in some of its requirements.

Our fascination with this intervention, this interaction, this portal into the soul of the earth is what we here at Domaines & Terroirs seek to discover through journeys into the countryside.

The New Art of Cheese Writing

'Galets de Cher  It’s like getting the high of a Bikram Yoga class without the heat, the postures and the drill sergeant instructor.'   

Now that's what I call a description!  Apparently in the US, and in particular in NY, cheesemongers create little odes to each of their cheese to help tantalize customers into trying a cheese.  So a bit of creative writing added to great personalities with lots of knowledge about this most wonderful product and wow, how cool is that? I can imagine this happening in the UK but never in France!  This is too bad as it really seems like a natural part of the process of marrying nature, terroir, skill and personality.  

Take a look at this article In the Dairy Case, Ripe Prose, by Jeff Gordinier, in the NYTimes January 22, 2013 and read all about it.

Gardeners or slaves of France - The life of French milk farmers today

The reporter extraordinaire Harry Roselmack from TF1 (French TV), provided a look into the dire status of the independant French milk farmers with his show on January 25th - Harry Roselmack avec les résistants du monde paysan (Harry Roselmack with the Peasant Resistance). He spent several weeks with a group of diary farmers from the region of Ille-et-Vilaine in Brittany to better understand their life, the hardships they face and the little publicized fact that suicide amongst them are soaring, with more than 400 dead per year and many giving up their ancestral farms because they can not continue to pay to work on them.

The gist of the program was the paradox that while these farmers, once respected as 'les jardiniers (gardeners) de la France' providing food for the country,  they frequently can barely provide for their families.  They now believe they have become nothing more than 'les esclaves (slaves) de la France'. These people work 12 - 18 hour days, 7 days a week with rarely any time off and no benefits.  Prices for their production fell more than 30% in one year, all while operating expenses tripled. To wake up every day knowing you will once again be in the red, can not be easy, and yet being a farmer is not a job, it is a way of life, so difficult to give up.

This life is a far cry from the cushy one, as one of these farmers called it, enjoyed by those workers who populate the ranks of France's syndicats (unions). To hear one farmer say he would be 'thrilled if he could at least earned the SMIC (minimum wage)' was pretty heartbreaking.  It was worst to know that a huge percentage of them are and have not been profitable for years and borrow money just to keep their animals feed.  And with the price of milk not keeping pace with the cost of operation, large numbers of these farmers are being forced to give up their farms, many having been past down for generations; the statistics were pretty grim. In 2000, there were 120,000 milk farmers in France, today there are only 85,000.

This year, the drought has created yet more difficulties for them and even with the recent augmentation in the cost per litre, they will continue to live well below the poverty line. To be sure, it is a complicated situation, one that is similar, I am sure in other industrialized countries. The milk producers are at the bottom of the pile, with the cooperatives or processors and then the distributors above them. But the large cooperatives, who produce the milk products made five times what the average farmer made last year, so it begs the question of fairness.

The frustration of these proud people was palpable. A group of them have decided to revolt against this system of pricing that does not take into account the reality of their work production.  Four of them went on a hunger strike late last year with the hope of calling attention to their plight.  Try and find a link to have news of their status...good luck. The press largely ignores them, until of course they decide to dump their milk in the streets in front of a ministry. No wonder they feel no one is either listening nor cares, least of all the consumer or politicans.

An equitable resolution of what is fair for the producer all the way up to the consumer is the question. But as one farmer said, those who govern need to understand that the old adage of 'Le paysan ne cri pas quand il y en mal, il meurt en silence parce qu’il a la dignité (the peasant doesn't cry out when they hurt, they die in silence because they have dignity) was no longer going to be the case. The slaves of France were going to rise up and demand their respected place in the country and be paid fairly for their labours.  On verra...

Note Bene:  The look on Harry's beautiful face while two farmers at 1 in the morning were trying to pull a new calf out of the womb of it's mother, with great difficulty, was priceless.

Terroirs and Nationalities

If cheese, wine and other food stuffs have terroir which defines their nature relative to the place they arise from, could one say that people's nationality is similar to terroir? I have pondered this question ever since I moved to France - Paris to be exact, then the United Kingdom - London and then back again to Paris. Were the French like a big intense Époisses, the English like a West Country Cheddar and us Americans like…Velveeta?  

Living and working in France and the UK, across Europe and in the Emirates, I came across many different cultural styles and just like terroir, began to attribute certain characteristic behaviour to each of them. I never saw the French as rude and arrogant, probably because to me, their comportment was specific to their surroundings. They were direct and straight-forward; extremely dynamic. Okay they could be contentious but they were always intensely committed to what they believed. For me, they and their motivations were totally understandable (even though speaking French) and accessible.  

When I moved to the UK, I thought, wow, now I will be able to understand everything that's going on because of course, they speak English…well this proved to be typical expat thinking and a big trap because although the language is English, it is spoken or rather delivered in an extremely different manner. A great deal of communication in the UK and specifically England is subtext and non-verbal. This attribute proved to render understanding anything that was going on there (even in a language in which I was fluent) more difficult and sometimes downright incomprehensible.  

The Emirates were even more fascinating. The working echelons, like any wine or cheese were certainly the product of their own culture but having been shipped off at 18 or 19 to the UK or the US, they acquired another terroir as it were. They were capable of displaying their own cultural terroir, Arabic culture, as well as the veneer of the acquired occidental culture, separately, intermingled or intermittently at will. To deal with this was intriguing and a very slippery slope and strained my theory of terroir and nationality a bit.  

To explain what I had learned to my colleagues in America, the terroir analogy was a bit of a stretch, so another one worked better. What does NO mean to each of these cultures? In my dealings with Germans, it quite simply meant no, not possible. To the English, no meant 'oh sorry, not certain but could be nice'. To the French, no means no - but, i.e., if you can convince me you and your argument are worthy, it could change to yes. To the Italians, no always meant 'anything is possible bella, so let's have lunch and we'll work it out'. In the Emirates, no meant absolutely nothing, no is the beginning of a negotiation. Although simplistic, this always helped bewildered and flustered American colleagues.  

I was recently asked to write an article on the subject of cultural differences between the French and Americans for The American Magazine, published in the United Kingdom. Instead of cheese references, I found another one more relevant and rather amusing. If you are interested, here is the link to the article Smile - We're all Cats and Dogs