Nicholas Goldberg: Whose cheese is it anyway? The Swiss ponder the international politics of gruyere

Switzerland is a small country that is not known for too many things. It's got its cheese, its banks, its mountains, its neutrality, its watches, its pocketknives and its chocolate.

If any of those is threatened — threatened with cultural appropriation, that is — beware! The Swiss take this stuff seriously.

That's what accounts for two recent crises, one over the labeling of gruyere cheese and another over the packaging of Toblerone chocolates. (Perhaps you blinked and missed them.)

Let's start with gruyere.

Gruyere is, as the "Oxford Companion to Cheese" puts it, "among the greatest