TABLE OF CONTENTS
Best French Natural Rind Cheese Types
Chavignol is a small cheese made from raw goat's milk that must weigh at least 60 grams. Its color is white or ivory and it has a dense, moist texture with a thin, moldy rind on the outside. The flavor of Chavignol is full, slightly nutty and 'goaty'.
It can mature for up to three months, and when the rind drastically changes its color and becomes very hard, and the body becomes drier and crumbly, the origin of its name - crottin, meaning horse dung in French, is explained. Chavignol is great when grilled and served hot on a salad or eaten with bread and bacon.
Comté is a big, hard cheese made from unpasteurized cow's milk, with at least 45% fat and a pressed, cooked paste. Each cheese wheel is unique with numerous taste varieties that can range from milky, spicy, roasted to fruity, buttery or plant-like due to the fact the milk it is made from must be used immediately.
It is made in the Jura massif in the caves of Doubs, Jura and Haute-Saône departments in France. The maturation period lasts at least 120 days and it is turned and scrubbed regularly during the process. Comté also has a seasonal stamp, like winter, summer, mountain Comté or plains Comté.
THE BEST Comté Cheeses
![Comtés Juraflore à La Coupe](/images/products/5c74dbfcd4c84fc3bedbe7f17aee1bb2.png?w=234&h=140)
Also known as Vacherin du Haut-Doubs, Mont d'Or is a soft cheese made from raw cow's milk in the Haut-Doubs region in France. What's unique about Mont d'Or's visual appearance is that it is encircled by spruce bark strips and packaged in a spruce wooden box that keeps the cheese in place.
It has a full, rich, sweet and grassy flavor and a slightly acidic taste. Its rind is not edible like in most other French cheeses, so it has to be removed to get to the creamy, runny, almost liquid inside, when fully ripe. As the cheese is already almost melting, it can be eaten like a fondue and enjoyed with sparkling wines.
THE BEST Mont d'Or Cheeses
Picodon is a small, round cheese made from goat's milk, with a minimum weight of 60 grams, produced in the Ardéche and Drôme regions in France. Its rind is thin, with yellow or white mold speckled with blue on the exterior.
The maturation period is at least 14 days. On the inside, it is white or yellow, with a fine texture that becomes crumbly if it is matured for a longer period of time. Its flavor is fresh and clean, with a balance of salty and acidic notes, but it gets concentrated and sharp if it is matured longer, when the cheese loses half of its mass by drying out.
THE BEST Picodon Cheeses
Salers is a soft farm cheese made from cow's full-fat milk, the final product weighs 35 to 50 kilograms and has been produced in the French region of Cantal since the High Middle Ages. It's made immediately after milking and then matured for at least three months.
Its rind is hard and brown and becomes even harder and crustier as it matures. The interior of Salers is rich yellow in color, with fruity aromas and the taste is nutty, spicy and intense, reminiscent of raw onions, wild flowers, and freshly cut grass.
Tomme de Savoie is an uncooked, semi-soft cheese with a gray rind that has yellow and red spots all over it. The cheese is made from cow's milk in the regions of Savoie and Haute-Savoie in France. It is the oldest cheese from the Savoie region, where the mountain climate gives the cheese its unique qualities.
Tomme de Savoie was invented when local peasants turned their summer milk supplies into cheese, in order to last for the winter. After the cream is drained to make butter, Tomme de Savoie is produced from the leftover skimmed milk, which is why it has quite a low fat content (40%).
THE BEST Tomme de Savoie Cheeses
Raclette de Savoie is an ancient mountain cheese common to the Savoie region in France and the canton of Valais in Switzerland. It derives its name from racler, meaning to scrape, which describes the way the local people cut this cheese.
Raclette is a semi-soft cow's milk cheese, unpasteurized, with a dark-beige slightly sticky rind and a light yellow paste. It has a pleasant flavor but it gets particularly tasty when heated in front of a fire or under a hot grill and only then the full aroma intensifies.
Pair with
THE BEST Raclette de Savoie Cheeses
![Raclette Du Valais Aop Valdor - Bagnes 4 - Liddes](/images/products/1a84aae711de40d2be3e71132f2e664a.png?w=234&h=140)
Fromagerie des Hauts de Savoie
Fromage Pour Raclette à la Truffe d'Été
Concours International de Lyon - Gold 2025
Cabécou is a soft French cheese originating from the Midi-Pyrénées region. It is made from goat’s milk. Before it is wrapped in chestnut leaves and left to mature, the cheese is dipped in plum brandy and sprinkled with black pepper.
After about two weeks, blue mold develops on its thin rind. Cabécou’s texture is creamy and smooth, while its flavor is slightly tangy. It is recommended to pair it with a glass of Chardonnay.
Pair with
Fourme d'Ambert is an unusually tall, round, blue cheese that is unpressed and uncooked, with a high fat content (50%). It's made from pasteurized or raw cow's milk and it is one of the oldest cheeses in France. On the exterior it has a dry gray moldy rind, while on the interior it is creamy white with green or blue veins dispersed throughout the body.
Fourme d'Ambert is matured for up to 28 days in caves in the French regions of Puy-de-Dôme, Cantal, and Loire. During the maturation process, the cheese is injected with sweet white wine. The flavor is delicate and mild with a velvety mouthfeel, with earthy, mushroomy, sweet, and creamy notes.
THE BEST Fourme d'Ambert Cheeses
Ossau-Iraty is an uncooked, pressed, semi-hard cheese made from sheep's milk from the Pyrenees mountain range. Small cheeses of this sort must mature for 60 days, while the standard-sized Ossau-Iraty matures for at least 90 days. Underneath its moldy, iron-gray rind hides an ivory-colored body that is somewhat granular and creamy in its texture and melts very easily.
The flavors are rich and robust - reminiscent of nuts and toasted wheat, sweet and slightly grassy. Ossau-Iraty is so unique that it has a status of one of the first cheeses that were ever produced and is commended as one of the cheeses easiest to pair.
Pair with
THE BEST Ossau-Iraty Cheeses
TasteAtlas food rankings are based on the ratings of the TasteAtlas audience, with a series of mechanisms that recognize real users and that ignore bot, nationalist or local patriotic ratings, and give additional value to the ratings of users that the system recognizes as knowledgeable. For the “Top 93 French Natural Rind Cheeses” list until February 15, 2025, 2,473 ratings were recorded, of which 1,912 were recognized by the system as legitimate. TasteAtlas Rankings should not be seen as the final global conclusion about food. Their purpose is to promote excellent local foods, instill pride in traditional dishes, and arouse curiosity about dishes you haven’t tried.