This intensive gastronomic tour put together by my friends at Aborigens is curated for folks who want to learn about some of northwest Spain’s unique cheeses, and how they fit into regional cuisines.

Galicia and Asturias are hot spots of global cheese diversity. In Galicia, mushroom shaped Cebreiro and Tetilla will get us started, and we’ll finish with the sublime blues, Picon and Cabrales, aged in caves we’ll visit in the Picos de Europa mountains. In between cheese plates, we’ll have lunch at a winery, visit a natural cider producer, and eat regional classics like the Galician pork stew cocido galego and Cachopo de Ternera: ham and cheese between breaded veal steaks.

The ticket price includes all accommodation and more meals than you probably need, as we dine at cider taverns and rural restaurants, along with a lunch of a Cabrito in the small mountain town where we are welcomed by Queseria Javier Campo. Through these shared meals and the glasses of wine and cider we sip on, a deeper understanding of how the cheeses grow out of the bedrock of local culture, cuisine, climate, and farming will emerge. Those lessons will be given by the act of eating in place, speaking to the people whose lives are put into these culinary creations. For me, this is the ultimate way to learn about food, and I’m looking forward to sharing this path with some of you.