Spanish Food & Wine Journeys

Spanish villageCooking is art in motion
–Ferrán Adrià

Epicurean Excellence in Spain

Spain and its cuisines are attracting the attention of world chefs and gourmands alike, but it remains one of Europe’s great culinary secrets. Come and see what it’s all about! Experience wine tasting with vintners, cheese tasting with artisan producers, cooking with Spanish chefs. Visit the great markets of Spain, country olive oil presses, and tapas bar counters brimming with food, traditional vineyards renewed by visionary winemakers, avant-garde kitchens bound to their culinary birthplace.

Epicurean Experiences

Against a backdrop of charmed villages and Moorish alleyways, soothing Mediterranean beaches and rolling vineyards, you will experience what Spain excels at–cuisine rooted in tradition yet perfectly contemporary and ingredients so fresh it’s shocking.

In a Spanish kitchen deep in rural Spain learn age-old secrets you won’t soon forget. A walk through vineyards with the author of a Priorat wine will speak of of terroir. The scent of a paella cooked over grapevine cuttings will live long in your memory. A private tasting of Spain’s great sherries in the vaulted coolness of the Andalusian bodegas will awaken you to straw-amber-ruby colored charms.

Take a cooking vacation in a 15th century village townhouse, set in a part of Catalonia called the “Tuscany” of Spain, where medieval villages and wild coastal scenery enchant you. Or escape to the undiscovered Priorat wine region where you pass your time cooking and feasting on authentic Catalan cuisine, not to mention indulging in world renowned wines. Enjoy urban luxury and cutting edge culinary venues in Barcelona and Madrid, two cities that never sleep. You may find yourself dining at midnight. Follow global foodies on a pilgrimage to San Sebastián, Spain’s Michelin star capital. Tour romantic Andalucia where tapas are a lifestyle. Journey to Valencia and Alicante to witness modernity and tradition joining forces in the kitchen. Visit dramatic Extremadura, the source of Jamón Ibérico–Iberian Ham–and Pimentón de la Vera–Smoked Paprika, and the cradle of the New World Conquerers.

Choose one of our Epicurean Experiences in Spain for your next great gastronomical getaway.

Custom Journeys

Spanish streetlight BarcelonaWe can design an epicurean journey for two or more. Contact us for information about our customized tours for couples, groups of friends, multi-generational family groups, wine clubs or corporate incentive travel. We offer cuisine or wine focused travel, or a combination of the two. Trips available in Andalucía, Valencia, Rioja-Navarra-San Sebastián, Priorat-Barcelona and Extremadura. Call us to find out more.

Who We Are

Long term love affairs with Spain and an unfailing fascination with the many regional strands of the culture and the cuisine led us to design our tours. Epicurean Ways is the distillation of years of travel and residence on the Iberian Peninsula, of remarkable meals and memorable wine. We offer you memorable insider’s food and wine experiences in this extraordinary land. 

From the Blog:

Art in Barcelona

November 18, 2008

Art in Barcelona

Travelers to Barcelona can see some of Catalunya’s and the world’s greatest art at what may be the city’s best deal: La Caixa Forum. Entry is free and the exhibitions are devoted to artists such as Dalí, Rodin, Freud, Turner, Fragonard, Hogarth and Cartier-Bresson. The lineup for 2008-09 is as follows:

Alphonse Mucha, creator and proponent of the Art Nouveau style, 19 September 2008 to 4 January 2009.

Collections from the Uffizi Gallery: From Botticelli to Luca Giordano. An extraordinary collection of Italian art from the treasures of Florence’s Uffizi Gallery, 21 October 2008 to February 2009

Palladio: 45 masterpieces. An exhibition devoted entirely to the Mannerist architect Andrea Palladio (1508-1580), 19 May to 6 September 2009

The Caixa Forum Centre is housed in an art-nouveau textile factory, the Casaramona factory, designed by the famous Catalan architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch. See La Caixa Forum

Rioja Style Potatoes

November 11, 2008

I have decided to begin highlighting Spanish recipes in this blog. While I remain an avid cookbook reader and fearless experimenter in the kitchen, many people find it easier to incorporate a recipe into their culinary repertoire based on recommendations one recipe at a time. I will offer some of my favorites, many of which will be classics.

Spanish cooking is deceptively simple, a fact which many people find surprising. The flavor-packed results are due to the strength and high quality of the ingredients. Many dishes take little active preparation time; most of the time is taken up in letting the dish cook.

Here’s a classic potato dish from La Rioja, great for chilly evenings. Seek out good quality Spanish chorizo and pimentón (paprika), both available from specialty stores and the online Spanish goods store La Tienda.

Read more.

Manzanilla Sherry

November 8, 2008

Guest Writer Gerry Dawes

Culinary Travel in Spain

Manzanilla has become such a runaway favorite in Spain that it now outsells fino sherry by more than two to one. In fact, at last report, 70% of the dry sherry sold in Spain was manzanilla. It is the drink of choice at most fiestas in southern Spain and can now be found fresh in the bars and restaurants of Madrid and many other northern cities.

Manzanilla is a fino-type sherry, sometimes called el mas fino de los finos, the finest, the most elegant wine, of the fino family, which includes manzanillas, finos, and amontillados. It comes only from Sanlúcar de Barrameda and has its own denominación de origen, Spain’s equivalent of appellation controlée, called Manzanilla de Sanlúcar de Barrameda. Manzanilla can be sold as sherry from Jerez, but only wine aged in Sanlúcar can be called manzanilla. Like other sherries, it is produced by the classic solera system of fractional blending.

So fickle is nature in the production of manzanilla, that not all bodegas in Sanlúcar are capable of producing it and even in some bodegas that do produce it, there are areas in those bodegas in which manzanilla can not be produced. The big, airy, above-ground bodegas in the barrio alto of Sanlúcar have a number of doors and windows which can be opened to let in air from the ocean side of the bodega or can be closed off if there is too much heat. As with finos, the best producers of manzanilla use only free-run juice. After fermentation the mosto (must) becomes mosto-vino, then alcohol is added to bring it up to 15 - 15.5%. It then goes into 500-liter botas (butts), which are filled only 2/3 full, for ageing in large, airy, high-ceiling bodegas.

The special yeast which makes sherries of the fino family possible grows on top the wine in these partially fillled barrels and is called flor, literally flower, because it resembles the white flowers that grow near the surface of streams. In actuality, it looks like cottage cheese floating on top the wine. Because Sanlúcar is on the humid Atlantic, flor, which needs humidity, grows all year round on the surface of the wine in the manzanilla bodegas, while in Jerez in mid-summer and mid-winter, yeast growth can be severely retarded and the yeast will even submerge, exposing the wine to slight oxidation.

Since the flor does not disappear from manzanilla and the wine has no contact with air, it is the finest, lightest bodied sherry, and is the palest, usually a green-tinged color not unlike that of a fine Meursault. The poniente winds, the westerlies, bring a salt-laden sea breeze and give a light touch of salinity to the wine.

Manzanillas are aged a minimum of five years, which in practice means, that since the five year aged wine is fractionally blended with older wines in the criadera system, they will be five-seven years old, in the case of manzanillas finas, 7-10 years old in the case of manzanillas maduras, and 10 years or more in the case of manzanillas pasadas. While fino sherries in Jerez in a solera may be racked, never fully, just drawn down by quantities equal to a third of the capacity of the wine, maybe five to six times before the reach the bottling stage, manzanillas may be go through 14 rackings in the same period.

Gerry Dawes Copyright 2008

Travel Awards for Spain

October 25, 2008

Culinary Travel in Spain

Lonely Planet’s 2009 list of hot destinations known as the Blue List features the Basque Country in Spain and France. See Best in Travel 2009.

Barcelona holds 6th place in Condé Nast Traveler: Readers’ Choice Awards Top Cities in Europe. See the awards.

Barcelona holds 8th place in Travel and Leisure’s Top 10 Cities Europe. See T&L awards.

Ten hotels in Spain appear on Condé Nast Traveler: Readers’ Choice Awards Top 100 Hotels in Southern Europe. See Top Hotels.

Churros con chocolate

October 5, 2008

Culinary Travel in Spain If you are not acquainted with Spain’s “doughnuts”, called churros, generally served with a cup of steaming hot chocolate, see this recipe in the New York Times. Churros are easy if time-consuming to make. With the thick hot chocolate they are a great mid morning pick-me-up; served with coffee they are the quintessential Spanish breakfast. I have a special affection for churros perhaps because whenever I make them I am transported back to a seemingly improbable time in my life in which post-dawn churros con chocolate at the Chocolatería San Ginés in Madrid (Pasadizo de San Gines 5 near Calle Arenal) constituted the final act of una noche madrileña.