🧀 Sainte-Maure de Touraine

Sainte-Maure de Touraine is a French soft goat's cheese with a protected designation of origin (PDO), made exclusively from raw whole goat's milk in Touraine, in the Loire valley.

According to the single document, it is obtained mainly by lactic coagulation with a small amount of rennet and natural drainage, and has a tapered log shape. The rind is dusted with ash and shows visible surface mould. The paste is white or ivory, fine and even, creamy and sometimes slightly damp, becoming drier and crumbly with age. Each cheese contains at least 100 g of dry matter, with at least 45 % fat in the dry matter. A cereal straw runs lengthways through every cheese and is engraved with at least the name and a code of the production facility. The flavour is lactic, with nutty hints and vegetal notes such as hay.

The goats are Alpine, Saanen or Poitevine breeds or crosses of them, and 75 % of their annual feed dry matter comes from the area. The milk is produced, and the cheese made and ripened, in the area covering Indre-et-Loire and parts of Indre, Loir-et-Cher and Vienne. The label shows the name and the EU PDO logo in the same field of view.