Charolais

Charolais is a French PDO goat's cheese made from raw whole milk in the hills around the town of Charolles, between the Auvergne mountains and the Morvan massif. The paste is cream, dense and smooth; the shape is a small upright, slightly convex cylinder like a barrel, and the rind is mostly covered with Geotrichum mould.

The milk is raw and whole, lightly renneted, and the cheese is made from a lactic curd. Lactic bacteria are seeded with whey from the previous batch, so a rich flora grows naturally on the surface, and the cheeses are tended by hand during ripening. It ripens for at least 16 days in a cool, humid place, weighs 250–310 g, measures 60–70 mm across and 70–85 mm high, and its dry matter is 45 g or more per 100 g. Marks of blue Penicillium may appear on the rind.

The goats graze, and are fed fodder from the area, for at least 150 days a year. The area is made up of communes in Allier, Loire, Rhône and Saône-et-Loire: hedged hills 200–900 m high where almost 90 % of the fields are used for forage. Goat keeping was widespread here in the late 19th century, with 40,000 goats in Saône-et-Loire in 1892.

The flavour is strong, with grass, hay, fresh straw, mushrooms, hazelnut and butter. For a goat's cheese Charolais is large, so the slightly wrinkled rind protects it from drying out.

Why it matters to you: it is a goat's cheese with real character, set apart from soft fresh goat's cheeses by its longer ripening; the PDO name guarantees milk, making and ripening all took place in the area.