Chabichou du Poitou

Chabichou du Poitou has held Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée (AOC) status since 1990 and PDO status since 1996; its specifications, which came into force in their current version in 2021, emphasise raw milk and feed self-sufficiency for herds. Its management is handled by the ODG du Chabichou du Poitou et du Mothais sur feuille, whose registered office is in Mignaloux-Beauvoir, in Vienne.

The ODG describes itself as uniting 27 goat farms, 6 dairy-creameries and 6 farmstead producers, spread across the PDO geographical area — the limestone Haut-Poitou, which extends over half of the Deux-Sèvres and Vienne departments as well as several communes in northern Charente.

The Coopérative Laitière de la Sèvre presents itself as the creator of Échiré butter, established in 1894 and produced ever since according to know-how it claims to have preserved: mastery of cream maturation and churning in traditional wooden churns. The cooperative's website claims strict adherence to the specifications of PDO (AOP) Beurre Charentes-Poitou, noting its AOC recognition in 1979 followed by PDO status in 1996, with a cream maturation period of 18 hours.

The featured range includes Beurrerie Échiré butter, butter in a wooden basket (unsalted or demi-sel) and Échiré milks.

Fromagerie des Gors presents itself as an artisanal enterprise founded in 1994 in Melle (Deux-Sèvres) by Hélène Servant, based around a herd of goats and a desire to turn milk into cheese. In 2020, it found a successor in Stéphane Dos Santos; since July 2023, Stéphanie Baratange—who worked alongside him for more than twelve years—has taken over.

The cheese dairy works with 3 local farms (around 700 goats), two of them exclusively, favouring pasture grazing over indoor housing. A production facility modernised between 2021 and 2023 (a one-million-euro investment, supported by the Région Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Crédit Mutuel) now employs 12 people. The dairy claims 80 professional clients (wholesalers, cheesemongers, distributors, restaurateurs).

It crafts Chabichou du Poitou PDO (AOP) and Mothais sur feuille AOC, as well as original goat's cheeses (diamonds, domes, rings, crottins, bûches) and the Brique Sakura~NoHa, matured on a Japanese cherry leaf. Sales are conducted online, through partner cheesemongers and dairy shops, and directly at the workshop in Melle.

Ferme Georgelet is a family-run goat and cheesemaking farm established in Villemain, in Deux-Sèvres, spanning three generations. Emile Georgelet settled there in 1949 with dairy cows; in 1972, his son Paul and daughter-in-law Maryse introduced goats and turned to cheesemaking, initially sold at local markets. A 200-space goat barn was built in 1975 and farm buildings were converted into a cheese dairy; the business subsequently developed to supply Rungis and beyond. Since 2020, Delphine Georgelet, the founder's granddaughter, has managed the farm with the ambition of working towards complete self-sufficiency for the holding.

Today, the farm rears more than 500 goats and employs around ten staff, producing ten raw-milk farmhouse goat cheeses, including Chabichou du Poitou and Mothais sur feuille. The farm can be visited from Monday to Friday at the end of the day, and its shop welcomes visitors on Wednesday afternoons and on Fridays.

In Saint-Pardoux-Soutiers, in the Pays de Gâtine (Deux-Sèvres), Fromagerie Le Coteau collects goat's milk and transforms it daily on site, ladled into moulds by hand, for high-end artisanal production. Managed by Régis Fleurance, the house makes a full range of raw-milk goat's cheeses, from fresh to well-matured: Chabichou du Poitou, Mothais sur feuille, Pitchou in a small pyramid, Bûchette, Cabri, and Pardoux—its flagship product, presented as a small disc on a chestnut leaf.

The dairy also produces seasoned versions of its goat's cheeses, notably with fleur de sel de Guérande, piment d'Espelette, or garlic and herbs; one of them won a silver medal at the Mondial du Fromage in Tours in 2021. The shop at 14 Rue des Chaumes, in the hamlet of Le Poirier, is open from Tuesday to Saturday morning, with an additional opening on Friday late afternoon.

Located in Marçay, in Vienne, the Ferme du Chant du Bois is run by Stéphane Moreau, who keeps around sixty goats of the Poitevine breed. A farmer established for some fifteen years, he built his goat barn himself using eco-materials — straw, timber, hemp, lime, and bamboo.

The goats graze from March to October on plots farmed organically and, for the rest of the year, are fed on fodder and a mix of cereals and protein crops harvested on the farm — pursuing complete feed self-sufficiency, conducted in accordance with biodynamic farming principles. Raw milk from Poitevine goats, renowned for its cheesemaking qualities, is used to make farmhouse cheeses — including Chabichou du Poitou PDO (AOP) — as well as yoghurts. The farm also has soaps bearing the Nature et Progrès label made from its milk. Kids are reared by their mothers until weaning; goat meat preparations follow a short supply chain, with the farm's young animals slaughtered and processed nearby.

The farm opens to visitors by booking: tours of the livestock, biodynamic grazing pastures, goat barn, and cheese dairy, followed by a tasting and a walk.

In Sossais, in the north of the Vienne department, GAEC Roux de l'Âne Vert has run several complementary operations for three decades: a herd of dairy goats, a farrow-to-finish pig farm, and cereal and forage crops, alongside a cheese-making workshop. The farm lies within the Chabichou du Poitou appellation area and is among the farmhouse producers listed by the PDO (AOP) syndicate.

All cheeses are made exclusively from the raw milk of the farm's goats. The range centres on Chabichou du Poitou under its Protected Designation of Origin (PDO)—soft and tangy when young, it turns creamy then drier and more robust after around thirty days of maturing—alongside variations produced using the same process: the ash-coated chabi with vegetable charcoal, the galette with its fresh texture, the faisselle which serves as the foundation for the entire range, the bûchette, and the pyramide. The farm has won multiple awards for its Chabichou du Poitou at the Concours Général Agricole in Paris, taking gold in 2024 and silver in 2019, and regularly competes at the Saveurs Régionales de Nouvelle-Aquitaine.

The farm welcomes visitors to its shop from Monday to Saturday from 8:00 to 12:00, with an additional afternoon opening on Friday from 15:00 to 19:00.

The Fromagerie de Fontenille is a workshop producing and maturing goat's and ewe's milk cheeses, located in Fontenille-Saint-Martin-d'Entraigues, in Deux-Sèvres, between Niort and Angoulême. Established in 1994, the workshop joined the Beillevaire group ('Les Petites Laiteries') in 2014, which enabled it to expand its range of cheeses. It works using the lactic method and collects its milk from around ten local farms, both conventional and organic, situated within a forty-kilometre radius — a short-chain arrangement led by a team headed by Stéphane.

The workshop produces Chabichou du Poitou PDO (AOP), the emblematic goat's cheese of Poitou whose local production has received awards on several occasions at the Concours Général Agricole, alongside goat's cheese logs and Mothais sur feuille. Two moulding techniques are used depending on the cheese: direct moulding, with 24 hours of draining, and moulding from pre-drained curd, over 48 hours.

The Laiterie Coopérative de Pamplie states that it was founded in 1905 by a handful of producers from the village of Pamplie, in Gâtine (Deux-Sèvres) — a region it describes as renowned for its dairy production. It claims the production of beurre Pamplie, churned according to artisanal know-how under the Beurre Charentes-Poitou PDO (AOP); it has been awarded the Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivant label, a recognition by the French state of traditional know-how in churned butter production. It describes itself as an independent cooperative bringing together around sixty producers, and has been a member of the Collège Culinaire de France since 2015.

In 2023, the cooperative indicated that it had finalised the acquisition of the La Bonde de Gâtine cheese dairy (Verruyes), founded in 1966, which continues under this name to produce raw-milk goat's cheeses, including Chabichou du Poitou PDO and Mothais-sur-feuille. Since 2025, it has been chaired by Sébastien Richard, with Marie Eck as managing director, who respectively succeed Jean-Pierre Germain and Daniel Arlot.