Grey Owl is an ash-coated goat's-milk cheese made by Fromagerie Le Détour in the Témiscouata region of Québec, Canada. Its dark, wrinkled rind gives way to a snow-white paste with a lemony tang, and it's named after a man who once lived on the shore of the same lake the cheesemakers work beside.
The cheese has also become the center of a royal-wedding rumor that's more interesting once you separate what's confirmed from what's been repeated.
In This Article
A Cheese Dairy That Filled a 35-Year Gap
Mario Quirion and his wife Ginette Bégin founded Fromagerie Le Détour in 1999. Quirion, from the Beauce region, conceived the idea of opening a cheese dairy.
Bégin, whose home region is Témiscouata, supported the venture, and the couple deliberately chose to locate there because the region had gone without a cheese dairy of its own for 35 years.
The dairy started with cheddar, Monterey Jack, and mozzarella in 1999, then expanded into ripened soft cheeses starting in 2004. It now makes roughly eight to eleven ripened cheeses from cow, goat, and sheep's milk, and distributes from New Brunswick to Ontario and into the US.
Named After a Man Who Lived by the Lake
Grey Owl takes its name from Archibald Stansfield Belaney, an English-born writer and conservationist who adopted the identity "Grey Owl" and a self-fashioned Ojibwe persona, and who lived for roughly two years on the shores of Lake Témiscouata, near where the fromagerie now stands.
No source captures Quirion or Bégin explaining in their own words why they chose this specific name, so treat the connection as a well-documented regional tribute rather than a directly quoted founder's explanation.
How Grey Owl Is Made
The cheese is made from pasteurized Saanen goat's milk, set with non-animal microbial rennet, which makes it vegetarian-friendly. The curd is dusted with vegetable ash on the surface, which both flavors the rind and helps it develop.
Because the rind does its work from the outside in, age shows on a cut face as a soft glossy band under the ash that widens the longer a wheel sits. The dense center is simply the part ripening has not reached.
Wheels are produced in 1.2kg formats and cut down for retail sale, aging for about 14 days total. No source names the specific mould culture used on the rind, though the surface-ripened, wrinkled character is consistent with the same family of cultures used on other ash-coated bloomy cheeses.
Fourteen days is a short ripening for a rinded cheese, and it is the reason the center never breaks down. A bloomy cow's-milk wheel given four or five weeks runs soft edge to edge by comparison.
Cutting a 1.2kg wheel down for retail opens a face with no rind over it, so that surface dries and firms within a day or two under wrap. Buy from a counter that cuts to order when you have the choice.
What Grey Owl Tastes Like
Globe and Mail writer Sue Riedl gave the cheese one of its most vivid write-ups: "The sweet and tangy flavour rounds off nicely into a long linger," she wrote, describing the paste as "silky smooth and melt-in-the mouth," with "the paste oozes around the edges, reminiscent of a just-melting scoop of vanilla ice cream."
Retailer descriptions consistently echo the same profile: firm and crumbly at the center, creamy and silky near the ash rind, with a clean, lemony, mildly earthy flavor that sharpens slightly as it ages.
Those two textures separate visibly on a cut face. A chalky white core sits in the middle of the slice, ringed by a narrower band that turns translucent and glossy as it meets the ash.
The core breaks rather than bends under a knife. The band beside the rind smears across the blade instead, which is why a slice left on a board spreads at its edges while the middle stays upright.
Acidity does most of the work in the flavor. The lemon note is sourness rather than fruit, and it is what stops a paste this rich from tasting heavy by the third bite.
Eat the rind rather than trimming it. It is thin and wrinkled instead of thick and chalky, and a knife that takes it off takes the softest paste with it.
Awards
Grey Owl won 1st Place in the goat's-milk soft-ripened category at the 2011 American Cheese Society competition in Montréal, confirmed directly against the official awards brochure from that year. An earlier, widely repeated claim that it won "3rd place in 2016" doesn't trace to any primary source and appears to be a search-summary error.
The 2011 first-place win is the verified result.
More recently, Grey Owl won the Caseus Or, the top prize at Québec's Sélection Caseus competition, in September 2024, its fifth Caseus award overall and its first at the gold level, following a bronze the year before.
The two wins say different things about the cheese. Sélection Caseus judges Québec cheeses against each other, so the Caseus Or puts Grey Owl at the top of its home province, while the American Cheese Society result placed it first in its category against entries from across the continent.
The Royal Wedding Story, Fact-Checked
Several US retailers describe Grey Owl as having been "served at a royal wedding," but the actual documented story is narrower and, honestly, more interesting. A Radio-Canada report from May 2018 traces the claim to its source: Grey Owl was featured on the menu at Windsor Grill, a London restaurant, during the weeks surrounding Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding.
Chef David Wilby chose to feature it specifically because he understood it to be Meghan Markle's favorite cheese, reportedly discovered during her years living in Ontario. Mario Quirion himself is quoted in that report: "C'est le fromage favori [de Meghan Markle]," roughly, "It's her favorite cheese." No source confirms the cheese was actually served at the wedding itself, only that a nearby restaurant put it on the regular menu as a promotional tie-in during the celebration period.
How to Serve Grey Owl
Sue Riedl's own recommendation is specific and well worth following: "It plays well with others, making an especially refined match with smoked salmon."
For wine, a dry Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, or Vouvray is the consistent recommendation across retailers, chosen to match the cheese's lemony brightness without overwhelming it. Serve it on a board with baguette, honey, and fresh pear.
Honey and pear both work because they answer the acidity instead of matching it. Anything already sharp, such as a vinegary chutney or a pickle, flattens the cheese and leaves the board tasting of the condiment.
Cut a wheel into wedges from the center outward so every portion carries both the chalky core and the soft band under the rind. Slicing straight across the top gives the first plates all the soft paste and the last plates all the dry middle.
Keep it off the heat. A goat cheese this young and this wet slumps and weeps instead of melting into a sauce, so it does not belong in a gratin or a toasted sandwich.
What to Use Instead When Grey Owl Isn't Available
A young Valençay offers a similar ash-coated rind and lemony goat's-milk tang. Humboldt Fog shares the same ash-layered visual drama for readers who want something closer to home in the US.
Valençay is the closer stand-in of the two, because it also firms toward its middle and softens under the ash. It runs drier and more chalky through the core, so a wedge holds its shape on a board for longer than Grey Owl does.
Humboldt Fog uses ash a different way. Its ash runs as a line through the middle of the wheel as well as over the surface, so a cut face reads as a stripe where Grey Owl reads as a ring.
Buying Grey Owl
Grey Owl is sold mainly through Canadian grocery chains and specialty shops, with limited US availability through specialty importers.
A piece past its best announces itself before you taste it. The ash goes from matte and wrinkled to slick and dark, and the smell turns sharp and ammoniated instead of clean and lactic.
Take a cut piece over a pre-wrapped one when the counter will do it. Goat cheese held against plastic film picks up a flat, faintly sour note, and the ash rind smudges wherever the wrap presses on it.
Check the price against the occasion before you commit. At roughly $37 per 100g in the US this is a board centerpiece rather than a cooking cheese, and 100g goes far enough for four people alongside two other cheeses.
Nutrition and Safety
No complete, verified nutrition panel could be confirmed for Grey Owl from the producer or a major retailer, and figures found online conflict with each other, so no specific numbers are given here rather than repeating unreliable data.
Grey Owl is made with pasteurized milk, which makes it a safer choice than raw-milk cheeses for pregnant women and others avoiding unpasteurized dairy.
Pasteurization is not the whole of the question for a soft mould-ripened cheese. Anyone who has been told to avoid soft cheese during pregnancy should follow that advice from their own clinician rather than reading the pasteurized label as clearance.
Storing Grey Owl
Once cut, use Grey Owl within about a week, since the paste continues to soften and the flavor sharpens even under refrigeration.
Use a fresh sheet of paper each time you rewrap it. A used sheet holds the moisture it already pulled off the rind and hands it straight back, which turns the ash surface slick.
