Oka Cheese

Trappist monks from Bellefontaine in France founded an abbey at Oka in 1881, and in 1893 Brother Alphonse Juin arrived with the method for a washed-rind cheese from the Port-du-Salut tradition; the monks made it at the abbey for over a century, washing the rinds in brine to encourage the bacteria that give it the orange colour and the strong smell against a mild interior. Production was sold to a commercial dairy in 1996 and moved off site, and the monks left the abbey in 2009, so the cheese is no longer monastic. The abbey buildings and their gardens remain, and Oka Park has beaches on the Lake of Two Mountains.

What you actually see

• The abbey buildings - the Trappist monastery where the cheese was made.
• The washed-rind method - brine-washing that gives the orange rind and smell.
• The Oka village - the Lake of Two Mountains shore and the park beaches.
• The end of monastic production - a cheese now made commercially elsewhere.

When to go

Year-round; the cheese is sold across Canada. Oka Park's beaches work in summer. The abbey buildings have had changing uses since the monks left in 2009.

Honest expectations

The cheese is no longer made at the abbey or by monks, which surprises people who go looking for it there. The abbey is not a working monastery. The village is small.

Nearby

Montreal lies east; the Lake of Two Mountains is at the door.