Hi all!
Any suggestions for cheese tours in Paris? My husband is a bit nervous about the language barrier but really wants to go into the awesome fromageries to taste some unique cheeses…are there any organized tours you know of? Also - we will have a 6 year old with us, too.
Thanks so much for your recommendations!
Just wanted to encourage you to go for it! Pointing and hand gestures worked well for language barriers in shops, we tried all sorts of amazing cheeses! We used Google for some cheese types to sort out what kind they were at times.
Some shops had employees that did speak English as well, with manners and smiles/courtesy everyone was always great to us.
Paris by Mouth offers The French Cheese Explosion twice a week but has to be booked a couple of months in advance. It doesn't get better than that.
By tour, do you mean go to multiple shops? If you do go with Paris By Mouth, consider asking if their Saint Germain cheese tour is available. They offer a cheese tour in Les Marais as well but I find it less accessible. When I think back to how my children were at 6 years, any Paris By Mouth cheese tour would have been a disaster and a waste of over 100€ but all children are different and yours might enjoy being the only child in a group walking for about an hour and spending 2-3 hours tasting and talking about cheese. It might be moot anyway because I am pretty sure that Paris By Mouth will not allow anyone under 10 to be part of the tour group. I think you may want to consider Paroles des Fromagers in the 10th, a cheese shop with a cafe area.
We did a cheese tasting at the cheese shop Paroles de Fromagers in the 10th and enjoyed it. They introduced us to the cheese types in the cold room and then we went to the cellar and tasted 7 cheeses and 3 wines with instruction on tasting and combining cheeses and wines. It was an English group with people from the US, Australia and Lebanon when we were there. Enjoyable. We then got 10% off on product; most people were in hotels and so couldn't really stock up, but we found it a great chance to get some great cheese and excellent butter and even a jam for the apartment. They also have a cheese making class.
David Lebovitz has a great list of cheese tastings in Paris. If you Google David Lebovitz cheese tasting, it should show up.
Another one that he doesn't mention is Secret Wine Door which gets great reviews and is very reasonably priced (49 euros).
We just booked a cheese tasting for our trip in May and it all seems to come down to the best timing to accomodate all the other things we want to do.
Enjoy!
I strongly encourage you to find out more about "l'École du fromager" /The Cheese School advised by janettravels
parolesdefromagers.com/en/
They are pros who work with cheese pros and know nothing but cheese.
As janet also mentioned, it is not advisable to store cheeses like Munster or Maroilles in your hotel room, which could trigger fire alarms :))
Paris by Mouth has a cheese tour. I have not done the cheese only tour but have done 4 of their tours of different areas of the city. The last one I did in St Germain des Pres, I think the west one, just this week. We visited a cheese shop, butcher shop, chocolate shop, bakery is where we started and we ended in a wine shop to eat the food purchased. The guides are excellent. I am not sure about children on the type of tour I did. Their website will have details. Enjoy your trip.
