The cheese is the reason. The trip builds itself around it.
Which Parmigiano dairy lets you in at seven. What a day out to Gruyères from Geneva costs. Whether the Amsterdam canal boat with a cheese board on the table is worth it. Reviews of every cheese tour, tasting and farm visit you can book.
Four cheese days worth building a trip around.
A canal boat in Amsterdam, a Parma dairy at first light, a farm above Sorrento and a Paris cellar. What each one costs, and what the people who went say about it.
01The easy first bookingAmsterdam Classic Saloon Boat Cruise with Drinks and CheeseA 1920s saloon boat through the canals with a cheese board on the table and a drink in hand. Two hours, and the cheapest good evening in the city.
02Where Parmigiano is madeTour Parmigiano Reggiano dairy and Parma hamThe dairy works at dawn and stops by mid-morning: copper vats, the salt bath, then the ageing room where the wheels get tapped.
03A farm above SorrentoAuthentic Farm Tour with Pizza, Cheese, Wine & Limoncello TastingMozzarella pulled by hand in the yard, pizza in the wood oven, and limoncello off the lemons growing over the table.
04A Paris cheese cellarParis Art of Pairing Cheese and Wine Tasting in a Cheese CellarDown into a cave under the city with a cheesemonger, a dozen cheeses and the wines that were picked to sit beside them.
Italy runs more cheese days than anywhere else. Three kinds.
The north makes the hard wheels, the south makes the soft ones, and both let visitors in before breakfast. Three shapes of Italian cheese day, what it costs to join each and where it happens.
What cheese travellers book most, wherever we review.
Every cheese review →The tours more people take than any others on the site, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Amsterdam Classic Saloon Boat Cruise with Drinks and Cheese
Spend about an hour cruising Amsterdam’s canal ring aboard a classic covered wooden saloon boat. Hear local stories as you pass Anne Frank House, Jordaan, Rijksmuseum, Skinny Bridge, and the Amstel. Depending on your booking, enjoy Gouda, mustard, and unlimited beer, wine, and soft drinks. Guides such as Sofia, Noa, Jessie, and Albert have led recent sailings.
From · $21
Read our review →
2
Zakopane: Cable Car, Chocholow Baths, Cheese & Vodka
from $54
3
Guided Zaanse Schans, Windmills & Cheese Tour
from $22
4
Zaanse Schans Windmills, Clogs and Dutch Cheese Small-Group Tour from Amsterdam
from $51
5
Montmartre Cheese, Wine & Pastry Guided Walking Tour
from $127
6
Volendam and Zaanse Schans Tour with Cheese
from $40
7
Zakopane Cable Car, Vodka, Cheese & Hot Springs Tour
from $26
8
Evening Candle Light Cruise With Wine & Cheese
from $18
Six countries that put their cheese on the itinerary.
Emilia and the Amalfi farms, the windmill villages outside Amsterdam, Paris cellars and Bordeaux pairings, alpine dairies above Zurich, the Hunter Valley, and the goat farms of the Canaries. Each one with its best day out.
Wine and cheese, from a Bordeaux masterclass to an Amsterdam deck.
This is the tasting people book more than any other: a flight of local wines, a board built to sit beside it, and somebody who can say why the two work. Bordeaux and Paris do it underground, the Hunter Valley on a terrace, Amsterdam on the water.
What a cheese day costs, from an $18 board to a private dairy.
Every tour on the site, grouped by what it costs. A good number of the best cheese days come in under the price of the cheese at home.
Tasting rooms, museum tickets, canal boards and the farm stops on a bike ride.
Half-day dairy visits, walking tours with five stops, the classic afternoon pairings.
Full days with transport: Parma and Modena together, Gruyères from Geneva, private cellars.
Cheese is made before breakfast. These let you stand in it.
Farm and factory visits where the milk is still warm: the copper vat, the curd cut by hand, the press, and the cellar where the wheels sit out their year.
Three things a cheese trip gets that no other food trip does.
Tasting rooms and market walks turn up on every food itinerary. A wheel being tapped for flaws, a curd pulled into mozzarella by hand, and a dairy that only works while the herd is up the mountain do not.
The wheel and the hammer
Parmigiano Reggiano can only be made in a handful of provinces around Parma, Reggio Emilia and Modena, from raw milk delivered twice a day and nothing else but rennet and salt. Wheels sit in the ageing rooms for at least twelve months, and before any of them can be branded an inspector walks the shelves tapping each one with a small hammer, listening for the hollow note that means a flaw inside.
- 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
A cheese with a same-day clock
Buffalo mozzarella is made in the morning from milk that arrived that night, and it is at its best within a day of being pulled. That is why the farms south of Naples and across Puglia let visitors in so early, and why the good ones hand you a piece still warm rather than selling it cold from a fridge. Burrata is the same curd wrapped around cream, and it travels even worse.
- 1Cooking class with Pasta, mozzarella and Tiramisu with wine★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 549 reviews
- 2Make Fresh Pasta, Mozzarella & Tiramisù with wine★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 503 reviews
- 3Prepare fresh pasta, mozzarella and tiramisu★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 315 reviews
Cheese made where the cows are
Swiss show dairies at Gruyères and Appenzell run all year with a copper vat and a viewing window, but the real alpine cheese is made up on the summer pastures, where the herds go from roughly June to September and the milk never comes down the mountain. Day trips from Geneva and Zurich pair the vat with a hilltop town, and usually a chocolate factory on the way back.
- 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 mornings that refuse to wait for you.
Most of this can be arranged the night before. These four run on milking times, mountain seasons and coach traffic, none of which take any interest in your lie-in.
- 01Tour Parmigiano Reggiano dairy and Parma hamThe dairy makes its cheese once, early, and is done by mid-morning. Tours start around seven and the summer dates go first.
- 02Chocolate and Cheese Tour in AppenzellThe mountain dairies only work while the herds are up on the alp, roughly June to September. Out of season you are looking at a valley factory instead.
- 03Cooking class with Pasta, mozzarella and Tiramisu with wineMozzarella is made in the morning and eaten the same day, so the farm visits are early and the small-group ones fill weeks out.
- 04Guided Zaanse Schans, Windmills & Cheese TourCoaches reach the windmill village from mid-morning. The small-group runs leave Amsterdam before nine, which is the whole point of them.
Amsterdam sells cheese by the canal. The farms are twenty minutes out.
Zaanse Schans and Volendam put a working cheese farm next to the windmills, Gouda and Edam still weigh wheels in the square, and the cheapest good evening in Amsterdam is a boat with a board on the table.
- 1Guided Zaanse Schans, Windmills & Cheese Tourfrom $22
- 2Zaanse Schans Windmills, Clogs and Dutch Cheese Small-Group Tour from Amsterdamfrom $51
- 3Volendam and Zaanse Schans Tour with Cheesefrom $40
Gruyère, Appenzeller, and a pot of fondue at the end of it.
A Swiss cheese day is usually two stops and a train window: a dairy with its copper vat and viewing gallery, a walled town for lunch, and a chocolate factory on the way home. Zurich and Geneva both run them; Interlaken adds a lake.
By country — where the dairies are
By kind of day — vat, cellar, boat or bike
Parma to the Amalfi coast: the fortnight Italian cheese is built for.
Bologna
Modena
Florence
RomeThe cheese tours we reviewed most recently.
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Zurich Open-top Tour and Chocolate and Cheese Countryside
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Lucerne Trip, Igloo Fondue and Titlis Rotair Option
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Zaanse Schans & Volendam Private Tour: Windmills and Cheese
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Zaanse Schans E-Bike Tour with Windmills & Cheese
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Wine Tasting with Cured Meats & Cheeses in Florence
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Wine Masterclass & Cheese Tasting Workshop in Bordeaux
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2.5-Hour Cheesemaking Workshop & Clog Making Tour
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Day/Night Sledding + ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT Cheese&Chocolate Fondue
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