This group contains a lot of cheese. Washed rind cheese are cheeses that ripens from the outside in. They can be soft, semi firm and firm. Popularly some of the soft ones are called stinkers and they typically include Epoisses, Soumaintrain, Munster and Limburger to name a few. Reblochon is also a washed rind cheese, but not at all a stinker.
The process is that after treatment in a salt bath the cheese is inoculated with a cocktail of Brevibacterium linens, Debaryomyces hansenii and/or Geotrichum candidum and then washed regularly with brine all through the maturing period.
Washed rind cheeses are also closely connected with cheese made at the monasteries up through history. St. Paulin and Port Salut are original washed rind cheeses that originated from the monasteries, but today mostly just pale industrial copies are available.