CHEESE TOURS · AROUND THE WORLD
For people who plan the trip around the cheese.
Dutch market wheels in Amsterdam, alpine fondue above Lucerne, Parmigiano dairies near Parma, a cheese board and the Bordeaux that suits it. Real reviews of the cheese tours and tastings worth booking, in the towns built on great dairy.
Worth the trip for the cheese alone
Three regions a cheese lover plans a trip around.
Some places you visit for the sights. Amsterdam, the Swiss Alps and Parma you visit for the cheese: the market wheels, the mountain fondue, the dairy where Parmigiano is still cut by hand. These are the trips cheese lovers come home talking about.
Netherlands
Amsterdam
No country wears its cheese as proudly as the Netherlands. A guide leads you from the wheel-stacked shops of the old centre out to the green pastures and windmills of Zaanse Schans, where they still press Gouda the way they always have, then back along the canal with a board of young, aged and clove-studded wheels to taste. Few cities make cheese this much of the day out.
- 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
Zurich & the Swiss Alps
Switzerland keeps its best cheese up the mountain. From Zurich and Lucerne, day trips climb to the alpine dairies above Interlaken and the hilltop town that gave Gruyere its name, where they still turn the morning milk in copper vats. Taste a wheel aged in a mountain cellar, then finish over a fondue. Cheese as the whole reason to ride the train up.
- 1 From Zurich: Chocolate and Cheese Tour in Appenzell
- 2 Zurich eTukTuk Private Tour – with Cheese Fondue and Wine
- 3 Zurich: Rhine Falls, Chocolate & Cheese Factory Day Trip
Italy
Parma & Emilia
The flatlands around Parma and Modena make the cheese the rest of the world copies and never matches. A pre-dawn visit to a Parmigiano-Reggiano dairy catches the curd being cut by hand; the aging vaults hold wheels older than the trip you booked. Taste it cracked fresh off the wheel and nothing at home compares again.
- 1 Guided group tour TastyBus: Parmesan Cheese and Parma Ham
- 2 Parma: Traditional Cheese Factory Visit with Tasting
- 3 Parmigiano Cheese, Parma Ham and Balsamic
If you only book one
The cheese tour more travellers rave about than any other.
Out of every cheese 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 market wheels, Swiss alpine fondue, Parmigiano dairies near Parma, a Bordeaux cheese-and-wine afternoon. The bookings travellers are happiest they made.
Start with a place
The best cheese tours, town by town.
Amsterdam for the market wheels, Zurich for the alpine fondue, Parma for the Parmigiano dairies. Pick the town you are headed to and we will show you the cheese tours worth booking there.
Where to go for the cheese
Three corners of Europe built on cheese.
Start with the cheese you most want to taste at the source. Each of these is a region the site covers deeply, and a very different kind of cheese day waiting at the end of it.
Amsterdam
A nation that built itself on cheese.
No city makes more of its cheese than Amsterdam. A guide walks you through the wheel-stacked shops of the old centre, then out to the windmills and green pastures of Zaanse Schans where Gouda is still pressed by hand. Most tours finish on the water, a board of young, aged and clove-studded wheels passed around as the canal slides by.
See the best Amsterdam cheese tours →Zurich & the Alps
Where the cheese is made up the mountain.
From Zurich and Lucerne, the best cheese days head for the hills: a working alpine dairy where the morning milk turns in a copper vat, a cellar lined with wheels aging in the cold mountain air, and a long fondue to finish. Many trips climb to Gruyeres or Emmental, the valleys that gave their cheeses to the world.
See the best Zurich cheese tours →Bordeaux
The cheese board the wine was made for.
In Bordeaux the cheese never travels far from the bottle. A tasting pairs a runny Saint-Nectaire or a sharp Comte against the reds of the Medoc and Saint-Emilion, with a guide explaining why each match works. Many days run out into the vineyards, the cellar visit and the cheese board folded into one long, unhurried afternoon.
See the best Bordeaux cheese tours →Parma at dawn
Inside the vaults where Parmigiano ages.
The dairies of Emilia open before the sun is up, when the curd from the morning milk is cut by hand the way it has been for centuries. A tour walks you through the coppers and into the aging vaults, thousands of wheels stamped and stacked, then cracks one open to taste. The version sold at home never tastes the same again.
- 1 Guided group tour TastyBus: Parmesan Cheese and Parma Ham
- 2 Parma: Traditional Cheese Factory Visit with Tasting
- 3 Parmigiano Cheese, Parma Ham and Balsamic
By the wheel
How far into the cheese do you want to go?
A gentle board on an Amsterdam canal. A Zurich shop-to-fondue afternoon. A pre-dawn Parma dairy where the curd is still cut by hand. Pick the morning that sounds like your kind of cheese day.
Ease in
Amsterdam, a board on the water.A slow canal cruise with a guide, a glass in hand and a plate of young and aged Gouda passed around. Everything you came to taste, nothing you have to plan: the gentlest possible way into Dutch cheese.
Taste like a local
Zurich, fondue and the alpine wheels.A guide walks you from a city cheese shop to the bubbling pot, explaining what makes a true Gruyere and an Emmentaler before the bread goes in. The Swiss way of eating cheese, table and all.
All in
Parma, dairy to aging room.A dawn start at the dairy where the curd is still cut by hand, then into the vaults where thousands of Parmigiano wheels age in silence. The full story of one of the world's great cheeses, tasted at the source.
Sorrento & the Amalfi farms
Mozzarella, stretched while you watch.
On the hills above Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast, the cheese is made the morning you taste it. A farm visit catches the curd being stretched into fior di latte by hand, ricotta still warm from the pot, with a tasting under the lemon trees and a view back down to the sea. The kind of cheese that never makes it as far as a shop.
See all 13 Sorrento cheese tours →By town
Pick a town built on cheese.
Amsterdam for the market wheels. Zurich for the alpine fondue. Parma for the Parmigiano dairies. Bordeaux for the cheese and wine. Sorrento for the morning mozzarella. Lucerne for the lakeside cheese.
More cheese towns
More towns worth a weekend for the cheese.
Geneva and Basel for more of the Swiss wheels, Florence and Bologna for the dairies of central Italy, the Hunter Valley for cheese and wine, Porto and Krakow for the local makers. The rest of the map, ready when you are.
Three towns, three cheese days
Pick a town, plan the day around the cheese.
A market morning in Amsterdam, a cheese-and-wine afternoon in Bordeaux, an alpine cellar visit in Gruyeres. Three towns, three very different ways to spend a day with great cheese.
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