Best places around the world to enjoy cheese and wine on your travels
Travel website Culture Trip has put together a list of some of the best places in the world to enjoy cheese and wine. This useful list is for those with an appetite for the nibbles that are currently enjoying unprecedented media attention. Just because we don’t have access to the Downing St garden and ‘work meetings’, that doesn’t mean we can’t have a good time too with a bit of cheese and wine involved.
London’s claim to fame as a cheese and wine capital is just a few days old and it’s thanks to unexpected support from Downing St. To celebrate the moment curd nerds, turophiles and oenophiles can join a London Cheese Tour offering the capital’s finest cheeses wrapped up into a two hour walking tour. Walking with a guide through famous streets, attendees will get to pick up knowledge and trivia, take part in a cheese quiz, and sample cheeses and a fantastic glass of wine along the way. Culture Trip offers the London Cheese Tour from £32 per person. And if a sit down ‘work meeting’ is on the agenda then London is also home to the world’s first cheese conveyor belt featuring over 25 British cheeses, served on small plates with transparent lids, offered alongside natural wines (‘Pick & Cheese’ is located in Seven Dials Market).
The world’s best cheese — announced last month at the World Cheese Awards — is the Olavidia, a soft Spanish goat’s cheese, beating thousands of other candidates in this delicious election. The producer Quesos y Besos (‘Cheeses and Kisses’) is based in the Sierra Morena in northern Andalusia — a spectacular, remote mountain area rooted in viticulture and infamous in Spanish culture as home to bandits and thieves in the past.
Famous for its local pecorino cheese and wines, romantic street names and historic buildings, Pienza offers everything a small Italian town should. It is the perfect place to indulge in crumbly, golden sheep’s cheese and a hearty glass of red after visiting the town’s famous garden. The Piccolomini Gardens were created in the 15th century by the Pope himself so might have been the location for get-togethers of powerful people at work, talking about work while enjoying a bit of cheese and wine! Culture Trip offers a stay in a hotel called ‘The Secret Garden’ in Pienza — Il Giardino Segreto — that can be booked from £55 per night.
In Georgia, travellers can enjoy some of the oldest wine in the world — the country is often referred to as the cradle of wine, as it is where the first-known wine was fermented in 6,000 BCE. Wine is still made in qvervi, large clay egg-shaped vessels, usually buried in the ground. TRIPS by Culture Trip’s Riches and Ruins: Wine, Dine and Step Back in Time in Rural Georgia is a nine-day adventure taking a deeper look into the ancient wine-making and tasting process with a master craftsman. In Tbilisi, there is a stop by a local winery to sample some of the country’s incredible array of distinctive wines, many created by small-scale producers.
Perhaps the stinkiest Portuguese cheese, queijo de Serra da Estrela comes from the Serra da Estrela mountains and is loved for its aroma, as well as its strong flavor, which is why it’s nicknamed “the king of Portuguese cheeses”. Made from sheep’s milk, it is so creamy that it melts off the serving spoon. The slopes of the Serra da Estrela are also home to the Dão viticultural region — one of Portugal’s oldest established wine regions producing some of the country’s best wines.
Right in the centre of France, the rugged Auvergne region produces wines and cheeses that have been given the coveted Appellation d’Origine Protégée (AOP) label. The rich, volcanic soil makes this verdant part of France a bountiful destination for any foodie. There is a Route des Fromages AOP where travellers can take in the cheeses of their choice. The long tradition of winemaking in the Auvergne, unfortunately, fell by the wayside when the area was overrun by phylloxera (plant louse) in the 19th century. Luckily, numerous young winemakers are restoring the winemaking tradition in the region. Culture Trip offers stays in the hotel Premiere Classe Clermont Ferrand Centre from £35 per night.
