🧀 Chevrotin

Chevrotin is a French pressed, uncooked cheese with a washed rind and a protected designation of origin (PDO), made exclusively from raw whole goat's milk. According to the specification, it is a small cylinder 9 to 12 cm across and 3 to 4.5 cm high, weighing 250 to 350 g.

Rind and paste. After ripening the rind is covered, wholly or partly, with a fine white bloom made mainly of Geotrichum. The paste is supple and creamy, cream-coloured and lightly salted, with a goat flavour; it may have a firmer heart and small openings. The cheese contains at least 40 g of fat per 100 g of dry cheese and at least 45 g of dry matter per 100 g of cheese.

Making. Chevrotin is made only on the farm, from the milk of a single herd in which at least 80% of the animals are Alpine goats, including the local population known as the "chèvre des Savoie". The milk is renneted at 30 to 38 °C and left to coagulate for 30 to 40 minutes. The curd is ladled by hand into individual moulds, pressed for 6 to 12 hours, salted in brine or dry and dried for 5 to 9 days on spruce boards. The cheese is then washed with water, salt water or acidified whey and ripened at 8 to 18 °C. Drying and ripening together last at least 21 days from renneting.

Presentation. Each cheese is sold whole, in individual packaging with a thin spruce false bottom and an individual label showing the name of the appellation and the EU PDO symbol.

Chevrotin or ordinary goat's cheese? The PDO name describes a very specific farm cheese, not a general type. It is pressed and uncooked, with a washed rind covered in a fine white bloom, made only on the farm from the raw whole milk of a single herd, at least 80% of it Alpine goats. The curd is ladled by hand, pressed, dried on spruce boards and washed during ripening, which lasts at least 21 days from renneting. The paste is supple, creamy and lightly salted, with a goat flavour, and the cheese is sold whole in its own small pack.

Look for the name Chevrotin with the EU PDO symbol (protected designation of origin) on the individual label. The cheese is a small whole cylinder sitting on a thin spruce false bottom, with a fine white bloom on the rind. Because it is made only on the farm in Haute-Savoie and the Bauges, a label naming another origin is not the PDO cheese. Look for it at a cheesemonger, a delicatessen or a good supermarket cheese counter.

Production area. Milk production, cheesemaking, ripening and packaging all take place in the mountainous communes of Haute-Savoie (the Chablais, Mont Blanc and Aravis massifs) and the Bauges massif in Savoie. The name is protected in the EU as a PDO.