Chèvre means goat in French. On a cheese counter it means a fresh goat's-milk cheese: soft, white, and tangy, with no need for a rind.
France also ages goat cheeses until the outside wrinkles and the center turns firm. Those are specific named cheeses. This page is the fresh style, which is now made in many countries.
History
Goat cheese in France is old, especially in the Loire valley and the center of the country, where goats fit small farms better than large cow herds. Fresh cheese was the everyday result, eaten soon after it was made. Aged goat cheeses, with names and later with appellations, grew from that same milk.
The single word chèvre on an English-language menu is newer and broader. It usually points at the fresh log or the loose tub, not at Sainte-Maure de Touraine, Crottin de Chavignol, or Valençay. Those are protected cheeses with their own shapes and their own ripening. In the late twentieth century, fresh goat cheese also became a salad cheese in the United States and elsewhere. The Loire remains the classic landscape. The fresh style itself is no longer only French.
How it is made
Goat's milk is set, the curd is drained, and it is salted. A fresh chèvre may be ladled into a log, a small dome, or a tub. It is sold before a rind develops, or with only the faintest surface. The cheese is high in moisture. It is not pressed into a grating wheel, and it is not washed with brine.
Aged French goat cheeses take the same milk further. A surface yeast and mold wrinkle the outside, and the paste dries from the rind inward. Ash, a straw through the center, or a truncated pyramid shape can mark a specific cheese. None of that is required of the fresh chèvre on this page. If a label names an appellation, you have left the general fresh cheese and bought a particular one.
Taste
Fresh chèvre tastes clean, tangy, and a little salty, with a white mineral note that goat's milk carries. It can be lemony. It should not be barnyard-strong. That stronger, fermented character belongs to a ripened goat cheese. The texture is spreadable or softly crumbly when the cheese is fresh.
A sour, soapy, or bitter tub is a tired one. Goat cheese that has dried at the edges can still be usable if the center smells sweet and tart. A wrinkled, aged goat cheese tastes deeper, sometimes nutty, sometimes sharply goaty. Do not expect that depth from a fresh log, and do not call the fresh log a failure for lacking it.
In the kitchen
Crumble fresh chèvre over a salad, especially with beets, green leaves, or a sharp vinaigrette. Spread it on toast. Mash it with herbs as a dip. Bake it in a tart or on a flatbread so it softens but does not have to stretch. Honey, walnuts, and roasted fruit are common partners because the cheese is tangy.
It will not melt into a pizza blanket. It softens, and then it can oil off if the heat is fierce. Do not substitute it for mozzarella and expect a stretch. Do not substitute a very ripe washed-rind cheese for it and expect a fresh salad. An aged named goat cheese belongs on a board. A fresh log belongs where you want tang and white crumbs.
Around the world
France remains the reference, both for fresh chèvre and for the great named goat cheeses of the Loire and nearby regions. The fresh cheese is also made across the United States, in Britain, in Canada, and in other dairy countries. Menus that say goat cheese, with no other name, almost always mean this fresh style.
The word is not a protected name by itself. It is a material: cheese from goat's milk, sold young. When a recipe wants chèvre, a plain fresh goat cheese is the right buy, even if it was made outside France. When a recipe names Crottin, Sainte-Maure, or another appellation, a tub of fresh chèvre is only a distant stand-in.