🧀 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.

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.