from oblivion to the AOC, he saved the mothais on leaf

Did you know that there were only two leaf mothai producers left in the 1980s? Do you remember that it was not yet called mothais but sometimes La Mothe cheese, sometimes simply “on leaf”? Which leaf was not always chestnut, but sometimes plane tree and even paper…

Paul Georgelet has not forgotten anything. Certainly not this first meeting in Surgères, in the year 2000, in the presence of around fifteen producers determined to revive this emblematic cheese from the farms of southern Poitou.

“I went to see the grandmothers on the farms”

Two years later, he created the committee for the defense of mothais on sheet which he chaired until 2023. Twenty-four years later, the commitment of these pioneers allowed, Thursday November 21, 2024, the validation of a controlled designation of origin.

Modestly, Paul Georgelet denies being the main architect of this recognition. “ This adventure is a great moment in my life, it is made up of human encounters and collective creation”reacts, moved, the farmer producer from Villemain, south of Chef-Boutonne, who passed the baton to his daughter Delphine last year.

Yet it was he who, in the 1980s, set out to resurrect La Mothe cheese: “I met the great Parisian cheesemaker Pierre Androuët during my first trips to the Agricultural Show. He immediately found that we had a beautiful cheese there, that he didn't have that in his shop and that there was potential. »

“We kept the chestnut leaf”

At the time, therefore, there were only two producers left in Deux-Sèvres, in Lezay and La Foye-Monjault. Paul Georgelet was inspired by their cheeses which were not yet called mothais, encouraged by a cheesemaker from Niort: “I also went to meet the grandmothers on the farms in the region to see how they made this sheet cheese of which we find written records from the 1850s. We worked with the other producers to define a size – it was small around La Mothe and larger near Lusignan, in Vienne. We kept the chestnut leaf. We agreed on slow curdling, molding and all the manufacturing… More and more producers joined us when we started to hold competitions. » That's around ten years to recreate mothais as we know it today.

“And then twenty years of establishing specifications for the AOC”adds Paul Georgelet. “To define the appellation zone too, with geographers, geologists, historians… It was fascinating. »

Having served on the National Institute of Origin and Quality (Inao) has undoubtedly helped the producer from Sud-Deux-Sèvres to move in the right direction, while leading the players in the sector. The know-how passed down by the farmers and grandmothers of southern Poitou is now recognized. And protected.