Chabichou du Poitou

What is Chabichou du Poitou Cheese?

Chabichou, also known as Chabichou du Poitou, is a goat cheese made only in the north of France's Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. The AOC zone covers the south of Haut-Poitou: the south of Vienne, the Deux-Sèvres and the north of the Charente. The cheese got AOC status in 1990, with help from the efforts of Ségolène Royal, and output reached 555 tons in 2003.

Legend dates it to 732, after the Battle of Poitiers. Some of the defeated Arabs stayed in the area with their families and goat herds, and the pastures suited the "poor man's cow" well. The name is traced to cheblis, Arabic for goat. Goats were likely domesticated here far earlier, under Roman colonization. The cheese appears in print in 1782, in the Guide du voyageur à Poitiers et aux environs, and production climbed twice: once when phylloxera slowed regional wine in the late 1800s, then again as cooperative dairies spread, beginning at Bougon in 1906.

It is made from fresh, whole goat's milk, pressurized only slightly, less than 100 microliters per liter. The milk coagulates over 24 hours at 20 to 22 °C. The curd is moulded by hand with a ladle or mixer into perforated, truncated moulds and drained for 18 to 24 hours at 22 °C, turned over two or three times. After unmoulding it is salted with dry salt or sometimes in a brine bath, drained in drying rooms for 24 to 48 hours, then matured in cellars at 10 to 12 °C with 80 to 90 percent humidity.

Maturing runs at least 10 days and usually two or three weeks. Some wheels are held for months, which gives a more vigorous flavor.

The form is a cylinder called a bonde, after the bunghole of a wine barrel. The rind is natural. Chabichou is very white and smooth, flexible on the palate, semi-soft with a firm, creamy texture and a fine caprine odor.