🧀 Mâconnais

Mâconnais is a French soft goat's cheese with a protected designation of origin (PDO), made from raw, full-fat goat's milk. It is a small cheese shaped like the plug of a barrel, made in southern Burgundy.

How it is made. The curd is lactic, with only a small amount of rennet. The tapered barrel-plug shape comes from a special strainer and from the fact that the cheeses are not turned. At the end of the minimum ripening period a cheese weighs 50 to 65 g (at least 30 g if ripened longer) and contains at least 45 g of dry matter per 100 g of cheese and at least 45 g of fat per 100 g of completely dried cheese.

Look and taste. The paste is cream-coloured, soft, homogeneous, creamy, firm and smooth. The rind is covered mainly with geotrichum: beige to ivory when young, turning bluish as it ripens, and marks of blue penicillium may appear.

Goats and feed. The herd is fed on grazing, with fodder from the production area: grass and hay. Fermented feed and genetically modified crops are prohibited.

Mâconnais or Crottin de Chavignol? Both are French PDO cheeses from raw goat's milk with a lactic curd and only a little rennet, but they are not alike. Mâconnais is a tiny tapered barrel plug from southern Burgundy with a soft, creamy, smooth paste and a rind of mostly geotrichum; Crottin comes from the Cher area, is a flat cylinder and is made from Alpine goats only. Neither is the wine of the same name: Mâconnais the cheese began as the winegrowers' snack.

Look for the name “Mâconnais” and the words “Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée” or “AOC” on the label; in the EU register the name is a PDO (protected designation of origin). Every cheese is sold with its label. The cheese is a very small tapered cheese of 50 to 65 g, with a rind that is beige to ivory when young and turns bluish as it ripens. Find it at a cheesemonger, a farm shop or a supermarket cheese counter.

Label and area. Every cheese is sold with a label bearing the name Mâconnais and the words Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée or AOC. The milk is produced and the cheese made and ripened in the listed communes of Saône-et-Loire and in Cenves (Rhône). According to the specification, goat keeping here began as a complement to wine growing, and the small cheese was the winegrowers' snack.