Gruyeres Village, Cheese Dairy & Cailler Chocolate
A working cheese dairy, a walled medieval village on a hill, and the oldest brand-name chocolate factory in Switzerland - the two things the country is best known for, made in the same valley.
From
$140.50
per person
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Free cancellation up to 24 hours before the experience starts
Reserve now and pay later — secure your spot while staying flexible
Book ahead
This experience is popular — reserve early to secure your spot.
From
$140.50per person
Free cancellation
Cancel up to 1 day in advance for a full refund
Reserve now & pay later
Book your spot and complete payment at checkout.
Duration 7 hours
Check availability to see starting times
Meet on location
Children must be with an adult
Ages 6 and older
Where you'll go
Open in Google MapsHighlights
- Working copper vats at La Maison du Gruyere with a five, ten and eighteen-month tasting
- the walled village and its thirteenth-century castle
- Maison Cailler, making chocolate on the same site since 1898
What to expect
Gruyere cheese has been made in this valley since at least 1115, and the recipe has barely moved: raw milk, copper vats, and between five and eighteen months in a cellar. It takes four hundred litres to make one wheel. At La Maison du Gruyere the vats are working while you watch, and the difference between the five-month and the eighteen-month cheese is not subtle. Above the dairy, Gruyeres itself sits on a hill inside its walls, one cobbled street wide, with a thirteenth-century castle at the top and no cars anywhere. The counts who built it took their name from the crane on their coat of arms - grue - and ran the valley for four hundred years before bankruptcy ended them in 1554. The village also holds, incongruously, a museum of the work of H.R. Giger, the Swiss artist who designed the creature for Alien. He bought a castle here in the 1990s. The bar he built next door is worth seeing even if the museum is not to your taste. The day finishes at Broc, where Francois-Louis Cailler founded the oldest surviving Swiss chocolate brand in 1819 and where it is still made. A food day, not a mountain day. Easy walking, and you will not need dinner.
What you get
- Return rail transfer from Montreux
- La Maison du Gruyere entry and cheese tasting
- Gruyeres Castle admission
- Maison Cailler entry and chocolate tasting
- escort guide
- Lunch and drinks
- H.R. Giger Museum
- gratuities
Trip essentials
Pack this
- Comfortable shoes for the cobbled climb to the village
- a light layer for the cool dairy and factory floors
- a bag for cheese and chocolate purchases
- a written note of any dairy allergy
Check before booking
- Able to manage a 20-minute uphill walk on cobbles and uneven castle floors with no lift
- both tastings contain milk, so the product is unsuitable for a milk allergy or severe lactose intolerance and no substitute is available - declare at booking
- children under 16 accompanied by an adult
Leave behind
- Photography of the working production floor at either the dairy or the chocolate factory
- removing samples from the tasting rooms
- outside food in the tasting areas
- vehicles inside the village walls
- touching the copper vats or the machinery
Meeting point
Montreux railway station, main entrance, 09:00
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