CHEESE TOURS · AROUND THE WORLD
Follow the wheel to the source.
Canal-side tastings in Amsterdam, alpine dairies above Gruyeres, cave a fromage cellars in Paris, a Parmigiano vat steaming at dawn near Parma. Real reviews of the cheese and dairy tours worth booking, in the countries that built their name on it.
Worth a trip for the cheese alone
Three traditions worth the whole journey.
Some countries you visit for the museums. The Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy you visit for the dairy: the canal cheese barge, the alpine cellar, the Parmigiano vat at first light. These are the cheese countries travellers plan a trip around.
The Netherlands
Dutch Gouda Country
Holland built its golden age on cheese, and you can still watch the trade play out. The wheels come down the canal by barge in Amsterdam, stack the cobbled market square at Gouda, and sit waxed and gleaming in the weigh houses of Edam and Alkmaar. A tasting cruise or a Zaanse Schans farm visit lets you sample the young, the aged and the cumin-studded straight from the people who turn them.
- 1 Amsterdam Classic Saloon Boat Cruise with Drinks and Cheese
- 2 Amsterdam: Classic Boat Cruise with Optional Cheese & Wine
- 3 Amsterdam: Guided Zaanse Schans, Windmills & Cheese Tour
Switzerland
The Swiss Alpine Dairies
Switzerland makes its cheese where the cows graze, high in the green folds above the lakes. At the Gruyeres dairy you watch the morning curd cut by hand; in the Emmental cellars the wheels are turned and brushed for months on end. Most days finish the way they should, around a bubbling pot of fondue with a window full of mountains.
- 1 Gruyères Tour from Geneva With Train, Chocolate and Cheese
- 2 From Zurich: Chocolate and Cheese Tour in Appenzell
- 3 Zurich eTukTuk Private Tour – with Cheese Fondue and Wine
Italy
Parmigiano & the South
Italian cheese is a dawn craft. Near Parma the Parmigiano Reggiano dairies fire up before sunrise, copper vats steaming, the great wheels lowered into brine for their long sleep. Down the coast near Sorrento the mozzarella is pulled and shaped by hand each morning. You taste it minutes after it is made, which is the only way it should be.
- 1 Authentic Farm Tour with Pizza, Cheese, Wine & Limoncello Tasting
- 2 Sorrento Farm by Tuk Tuk: Cheese, Limoncello & Hands-On Pizza
- 3 Tour Parmigiano Reggiano dairy and Parma ham
If you only book one
The cheese tour more travellers rave about than any other.
Out of every cheese and dairy tour on the site, this is the one that sends people home telling everyone they know to book it.
The crowd-pleasers
The Most Popular Cheese Tours Right Now
Amsterdam canal tastings, Gouda market mornings, alpine dairies above Gruyeres, a Parmigiano vat near Parma. The bookings travellers are happiest they made.
Start with a country
The best cheese tours, country by country.
The Netherlands for the market towns, Switzerland for the alpine dairies, France for the fromageries, Italy for the Parmigiano. Pick where you are headed and we will show you the cheese tours worth booking there.
What kind of cheese day
Three ways to spend a day with cheese.
Start with the kind of day you are after. Each of these is a tradition the site covers deeply, and a very different afternoon waiting at the end of it.
Amsterdam
The cheese comes in by canal.
Amsterdam tastes its cheese on the water and at the windmills. A slow cruise pairs a board of young and aged Gouda with a glass of wine as the gabled houses slide past; a half-day out to Zaanse Schans puts you in a working farm where they still press the wheels and let you try the cumin and clove rounds straight from the cellar.
See the best Amsterdam cheese tours →Switzerland
Up where the cheese is made.
From Zurich and the lakeside towns, a day trip climbs to a working mountain dairy: the morning curd cut and stirred in the copper vat, the young wheels carried down to cellars that smell of brine and stone. Most tours end the way a Swiss evening should, a pot of Gruyere and Emmental melting over the table with the Alps in the window.
See the best Zurich cheese tours →Bordeaux
Cheese and the wine that was made for it.
In Bordeaux the cheese course is the point, not an afterthought. A tasting pairs raw-milk rounds from the surrounding farms with the wine grown a few fields away, walked through by someone who can tell you why a particular claret lifts a washed rind. It is the most civilised hour you will spend on any trip to France.
See the best Bordeaux cheese tours →Parma at dawn
Where the King of Cheeses is born.
A Parmigiano Reggiano dairy starts before the sun. You stand over the copper vats as the curd is cut, watch the great wheels lowered into brine, then walk the ageing rooms where thousands rest in racks for years. It finishes with a taste of the young against the long-aged, and you never look at a wedge the same way again.
- 1 Tour Parmigiano Reggiano dairy and Parma ham
- 2 Guided group tour TastyBus: Parmesan Cheese and Parma Ham
- 3 Parma: Traditional Cheese Factory Visit with Tasting
By the wheel
How hands-on do you want the cheese day?
A slow Amsterdam tasting cruise. A morning in the Gouda market and weigh house. A dawn at an alpine dairy near Gruyeres. Pick the day that sounds like your kind of trip to the source.
Ease in
Amsterdam, from the water.A slow canal cruise with a board of aged Gouda and a glass of wine as the gabled houses drift past. Everything you came to taste, nothing you have to get your boots muddy for.
Go to the source
Gouda, market and weigh house.Into the cheese town itself: the wheel-stacked square, the old weigh house, a farm shop where they still turn the rounds by hand. A guide walks you from the scales to the tasting table.
All in
Gruyeres, a dawn at the dairy.Up to the alpine dairy while the morning curd is still being cut, then the cellars where the wheels are turned and brushed for months. The whole craft, from fresh milk to a rind you can knock on.
Paris
The fromagerie is a Paris institution.
Paris keeps its cheese behind glass and down in the cave, and the best of it is sold by people who treat ripeness like an art. A tasting walk through Montmartre or the Marais hands you a slate of soft, hard and washed-rind rounds at their peak, a glass of wine alongside each, and a fromager explaining what to buy, when to eat it and how to bring it home.
See all 47 Paris cheese tours →By cheese town
Pick a town and follow the cheese.
Amsterdam for the canal tastings. Gouda for the market square. Zurich for the alpine dairies. Paris for the fromageries. Parma for the Parmigiano. Bordeaux for the cheese and the wine.
More cheese towns
More towns worth a cheese weekend.
Geneva and Lucerne for the Swiss classics, Florence and Sorrento for the Italian, Porto and Lisbon for the Portuguese, Interlaken for the mountain dairies. The rest of the map, ready when you are.
Three cheese days
Pick a town, plan the day around the cheese.
A market morning in Gouda, a cellar pairing in Bordeaux, a mozzarella morning near Sorrento. Three towns, three very different ways to spend a day with cheese.
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