Cheese is worth a whole day out. Here is where to spend it.
Which Parmigiano dairy lets you in while the curd is still warm. What an Amsterdam cheese cruise really costs. Reviews of every cheese tour and tasting you can book.
A canal boat in Amsterdam, a dairy in Parma, a Montmartre cellar, a train up to Gruyères.
The four bookings a cheese trip is usually built around. What each costs, and what the people who went say about it.
01The easy eveningAmsterdam Classic Saloon Boat Cruise with Drinks and CheeseTwo hours on the canals with a board of Dutch cheese and a glass in hand. The cheapest way to spend an Amsterdam evening well.
02The real thingTour Parmigiano Reggiano dairy and Parma hamInside a working Parmigiano Reggiano dairy while the curd is still being cut, then the ham cellars down the road.
03The Paris walkMontmartre Cheese, Wine & Pastry Guided Walking TourA fromagerie, a cave à vin and a pâtisserie in three hours of Montmartre backstreets.
04The alpine dayGruyères Tour from Geneva With Train, Chocolate and CheeseThe narrow-gauge train up to Gruyères, the dairy at the top of the hill, and a chocolate factory on the way back down.
Emilia dairy, mozzarella class, or a farm on the hill. Pick your day.
No country runs more kinds of cheese day than Italy. Three of them, what it costs to join each one, and which part of the country it happens in.
What a cheese tasting costs, from a canal deck to a private cellar.
Everything we have reviewed, grouped by price. A good number of the best cheese days come in under the cost of the wine you drink at them.
Market entries, factory tickets, canal-deck tastings and an hour with a cheesemonger.
The full days out: Emilia dairies, Montmartre walks, windmill runs and valley grazing tables.
Private guides, farm lunches on the Amalfi coast, and cellars that open by appointment only.
Half of cheese travel happens with a glass beside the plate.
France pairs by region, Italy by hill, Australia by valley. The tastings worth booking are the ones where the cheese and the wine come from the same twenty miles.
Six countries that put cheese on the itinerary, not just on the cheeseboard.
The dairies of Emilia and the farms above the Amalfi coast, Dutch market towns and windmill runs, Paris fromageries and Bordeaux pairings, the Swiss dairy trains, the Hunter and Yarra valleys, and the goat farms of the Canaries.
The most popular cheese tours and tastings, anywhere.
Every cheese tour we have reviewed →More travellers take these than anything else, and each one earns the slot for a different reason.
1
Amsterdam Classic Saloon Boat Cruise with Drinks and Cheese
Review of Amsterdam’s covered saloon boat cruise, with canal landmarks, Dutch Gouda cheese, unlimited drinks, guide commentary, and practical tips.
From · $21
Read our review →
2
Classic Saloon Boat Cruise with Cheese & Wine
from $18
3
Cable Car, Chocholow Baths, Cheese & Vodka
from $54
4
Cable Car, Chocholow Baths, Cheese & Vodka
from $26
5
Guided Zaanse Schans, Windmills & Cheese Tour
from $22
6
Zaanse Schans Windmills, Clogs and Dutch Cheese Small-Group Tour from Amsterdam
from $51
7
Montmartre Cheese, Wine & Pastry Guided Walking Tour
from $127
8
Volendam and Zaanse Schans Tour with Cheese
from $40
The best cheese day is the one where you watch it being made.
Copper vats at six in the morning, curd cut with a wire harp, wheels rolled into a salt room to sit for two years. A dairy runs to a production clock, which is why nearly every visit starts early and is over before lunch.
The Dutch built a whole visitor trade on one yellow wheel.
Alkmaar and Gouda still stage the old weighing, the Zaanse Schans farms press by hand for the crowd, and half of Amsterdam’s evening cruises come with a board and a glass. Nowhere sells cheese to visitors this well.
Every Dutch cheese day →
In France the cheese course is the reason for the meal.
Paris does it as a walk: a fromagerie, a cave and a bakery in one afternoon. Bordeaux does it by the glass, six wines with the cheeses cut for them. Burgundy and Normandy do it at the farm gate, an hour out of town.
- 1Montmartre Cheese, Wine & Pastry Guided Walking Tourfrom $127
- 2Private Montmartre Food Tour with Wine, Cheese & Pastriesfrom $302
- 3Paris Le Marais Food Tour With 10+ Tastings, Cheese, Wine & Morefrom $102
Three cheese days that cannot be copied anywhere else.
Tasting rooms exist everywhere. A dairy that turns five hundred litres into one wheel before breakfast, a square that still weighs cheese by hand, and a cable car to a cow pasture do not.
The Parmigiano Reggiano dairy
Parmigiano is made once a day and only in the morning, because the evening milk has to stand overnight for the cream to rise. Copper vats, curd cut with a wire harp, and a wheel that will not be sold for two years. The visit runs on the dairy’s clock rather than yours, which is why nearly every tour leaves Parma or Bologna before seven.
- 1Tour Parmigiano Reggiano dairy and Parma ham★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 601 reviews
- 2Parmigiano Production and Parma Ham Tour & Tasting★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 554 reviews
- 3Guided group tour TastyBus: Parmesan Cheese and Parma Ham★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 241 reviews
The market that still weighs by hand
Alkmaar and Gouda kept the guild theatre going long after the trade moved into lorries: carriers in coloured hats, wheels stacked on wooden sledges, a bell to open the bidding. It is staged and it is still the best hour in Dutch cheese, mostly because the shops around the square sell exactly what the theatre is about.
- 1Guided Zaanse Schans, Windmills & Cheese Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 4,826 reviews
- 2Zaanse Schans Windmills, Clogs and Dutch Cheese Small-Group Tour from Amsterdam★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,369 reviews
- 3Volendam and Zaanse Schans Tour with Cheese★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 1,993 reviews
Gruyères, Appenzell and the cable car
A Swiss cheese tour is a transport puzzle as much as a tasting: a narrow-gauge train up to Gruyères, a cable car to a mountain dairy, a chocolate factory bolted on because the two industries grew up on the same milk. Half the pleasure is watching it come down the hill it came from.
- 1Gruyères Tour from Geneva With Train, Chocolate and Cheese★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 258 reviews
- 2Chocolate and Cheese Tour in Appenzell★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 224 reviews
- 3Swiss Cheese Fondue & Wine e-Tuk-Tuk City Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 168 reviews
Four cheese bookings that will not wait until you land.
Most tastings can be arranged the evening before. These four run on production schedules, market days and rooms that take one small group at a time.
- 01Tour Parmigiano Reggiano dairy and Parma hamThe dairy makes cheese once a day, in the morning, and takes one group with it. Spring slots go weeks ahead.
- 02Gruyères Tour from Geneva With Train, Chocolate and CheeseThe train and the cable car both run to a timetable, and the dairy visit is timed to the pair of them.
- 03Guided Zaanse Schans, Windmills & Cheese TourEvery Amsterdam operator sells this half day. The good small-group ones fill first all summer.
- 04Montmartre Cheese, Wine & Pastry Guided Walking TourThese walk in groups of eight or ten, because the fromagerie is the size of a front room.
Cheese runs on somebody else’s timetable, and it is never the afternoon.
Making happens at first light. Salt rooms and affinage cellars sit at ten degrees and take small groups. Market theatre is one morning a week. Raw-milk cheese cannot always come home in your bag. Book the cheese around the clock and the calendar, then build the rest of the day behind it.
By country, then by city
By kind of day, from a boat deck to a copper vat
Amsterdam, Gouda, Paris, Bordeaux, Switzerland, Parma: a cheese run that works entirely by train.
Gouda
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