ALBARIÑO & SEAFOOD IN PORTUGAL & SPAIN
Porto → Vinho Verde → Rías Baixas → A Coruña
☾ 6 Nights
TRIP OVERVIEW
Two countries, Portugal and Spain, that share the Alvarinho-Albariño grape and an obsession with seafood. This may be the most food-centric, specifically seafood-centric, food tour imaginable. We wanted it that way because the amazing freshness and unpretentiousness of the food make for pure epicurean pleasure, joy even. At your fingertips are the perfect wines to pair with all that seafood. Life can be easy sometimes.
ALBARIÑO & SEAFOOD IN PORTUGAL & SPAIN
Day 1 – Welcome to Porto
Start your trip in Portugal’s second city Porto, a Douro River city full of old-world charm and interesting food and wine. After you arrive in the city, a local expert guide will pick you up for a tour of the city center. You’ll see some of the city’s famous corners as well as the atmospheric spots you’d be unlikely to find on your own. Dinner at Almeja will give you a taste of local products in creative dishes at the hand of local chef João Cura and paired with small-production Portuguese wines.
Day 2 - Of Seafood and Wine
Porto may be a port, but the city is on the river, not the ocean. Today you’ll head to the Atlantic fishing port of Matosinhos just outside the city center. Matosinhos was long a center of the canning industry, but today it’s best known for bringing in fresh fish and seafood. You’ll visit the market, packed with untranslatable fish and shellfish. Then, it’s time for an extravaganza: lunch at Marisqueira A Antiga, arguably the area’s best seafood restaurant. Winemakers and lovers of good eating make their way out to Matosinhos to eat and drink here. Oysters and clams make great starters. Lobsters and shrimp in all sizes make their way into rice dishes. Subtle Atlantic fish are grilled or baked in salt. And the wine cellar is overflowing with rare wines from across Portugal and the world, including plenty of flavorful whites that pair splendidly with the food.
After lunch, your guide will take you to a family-owned winery in Vilanova de Gaia, the town across the river from Porto where Port wine shippers age their stock. You’ll taste fine Douro Valley wines with a member of the family.
Day 3 – Alvarinho and Albariño: One Grape, Two Countries
Leave Porto behind for the green hills of Portugal’s far northern Monção e Melgaço wine region, known for its high quality Alvarinhos, complex and capable of aging. You’ll be visiting the winery of Anselmo Mendes, the star winemaker and self-styled “Mr. Alvarinho” whose wines have helped bring attention to Portuguese Alvarinhos. Taste a wide variety of white wines before a picnic lunch at Mendes’s beautiful Quinta da Torre estate.
After lunch, cross the border into Galicia and head to the Rías Baixas region in Spain. This coastal area of Atlantic inlets is where Albariño first found fame, and whites from the Rías Baixas are still among the finest in all of Spain. Your countryside hotel offers a chance to unwind before heading to nearby Lagüiña Lieux-dit for a light wine-focused dinner. This restaurant, an updated take on local country eateries called furanchos, serves plates of honest local fare, from tapas to seafood specials, under scenic grapevines on the outdoor terrace. A major draw here is the wine list, featuring fine selections from all over Galicia, other Spanish regions as well as faraway corners of Burgundy or Germany.
Day 4 – The Heart of Spanish Albariño
Today it’s time to dive into Albariño with visits to two noteworthy producers in Rías Baixas. First, benchmark producer Pazo de Señorans, The long-aged whites at Pazo de Señorans are as appealing as the estate’s ivy-covered stone palace, and there’s superb orujo (Galician grappa) as well. Then it’s into the artisan side of Galician wine with an up-close visit to Albamar. Xurxo Alba makes truly expressive, terroir-first whites from his tiny plots of old Albariño vines near the Atlantic.
For lunch, you’ll be heading to oceanic O Grove for a one-of-a-kind seafood feast at D’Berto. This unassuming restaurant is known to lovers of bivalves and crustaceans as one of the best places in Spain to eat fresh seafood. Berto himself takes the role of host and his advice on what to order is worth following. Crabs and lobsters are specialties, alongside all kinds of shellfish and Berto’s handpicked XXL fish and seafood for those who need a crab the size of a small dog. The extensive, thorough and carefully curated wine list features, among other treasures, sparkling Albariño, dozens and dozens of Champagnes, top-class Albariños from most every producer in Rías Baixas and the finest whites from local areas like Ribeiro and Valdeorras. This is a place to unwind and celebrate seafood and wine in tandem.
After time to relax at your hotel (a nap perhaps), a light dinner awaits at Pepe Solla’s intimate wine and tapas bar. Solla earned a Michelin star for his visionary Galician cuisine, but his “wine tavern” is something else entirely. Casual yet creative dishes, fascinating local wines and a selection of vinyl from Solla’s personal collection as the soundtrack. All this in a beautifully decorated bar for a relaxing evening.
Day 5 – Conservas & Seafood
Today’s Rías Baixas exploration will put seafood in the spotlight. Head to venerable cannery Real Conservera Española to discover why canned seafood from Galicia is world-class and can match or surpass the flavor of fresh product. See the process, from where carefully chosen seafood arrives to the placement into individual cans. Of course, a tasting follows: iconic premium cans of clams, mussels and sardines paired with Galician wine. These cans are an appetizer delicacy for food-loving Spaniards for a reason: they’re damn good!
Then you’re heading right to the waterfront outside fishing town Vilagarcía de Arousa for a special lunch. O Loxe Mareiro’s terrace sits feet from the waters of the Atlantic, and this is where your feast begins. A glass of Godello in hand, expect select bivalves: oysters, clams, cockles, razor clams and more. Feel the sea breeze in your hair before more seafood of increasing richness like scallops, lobster and octopus. Then, of course, it’s time for fish! The expert chefs here grill choice whole fish from the abundant fishing ports surrounding the restaurant. With a cellar full of great local wine and the terrace for enjoying post-lunch reflection, you’ll be glad to not be in a hurry.
Once you’ve had your fill, it’s on to the jewel city of Galicia’s north coast: A Coruña. With its glass-galleried 19th-century buildings and water on all sides, A Coruña is the most Atlantic of Galicia’s cities. Get settled in before a stroll down to Ultramarinos Galera, where two young chefs have brought a new spark to the city’s one-time aperitif spots (ultramarinos). As these bars must, there’s top-quality cold fare on offer: hand-cut Iberian ham, aged cheese from Spain’s best producers, umami-packed anchovies. But Galera offers more: daily seafood specials prepared simply.
Day 6 – Eating in A Coruña
Start your day with an exploration of the center of A Coruña. Atmospheric streets and stately squares abound, and it’s hard to be far from the water with ocean on nearly all sides. You’ll also have a guided visit to the central market, where seafood from all over Galicia is on sale in every shape and color. Stroll along the waterfront to your lunch destination: Salitre. Start off with great renditions of Galician starters like empanada and escabeche mussels, then rice with lobster for a northern coast classic or a steaming caldeirada fish stew. A bottle of Galician Valdeorras Godello should round out the experience.
In the evening, join a local food expert for something completely different: a tapas exploration of the old town. Galicia is tapas paradise, with bars slinging specialties to hungry customers deep into the night. The local take on Spanish tortilla is a must, along with empanada, fried local Padrón peppers and, of course, more shellfish. To drink? Locals go for beer more often than not, but you’ll find Galician wine flowing for a final taste of green Spain’s galaxy of wines.
Day 7 – Departure
A private driver will take you to the A Coruña, Santiago de Compostela or Vigo airport for departure.
WHERE YOU’LL STAY
The One Monumental Palace
5-star luxury dead center in the heart of Porto, the One Monumental Palace Hotel offers elegance and good taste in a stately building from 1923. A spa with an elegant indoor swimming pool, a sauna and hammam, a one Michelin star restaurant, a Japanese restaurant and a cocktail bar mean you hardly need to leave the site.
The hotel is on one of Porto’s central streets, Avenida dos Aliados, and is walking distance to iconic sites such as Lello bookshop, Torre dos Clérigos, the Bolhão Market and São Bento Station, not to mention the many nearby bars and restaurants.
Quinta de San Amaro
Quinta de San Amaro is a beautiful countryside hotel right in the heart of Rías Baixas wine country. Peaceful and cozy, it's the kind of place that makes you want to stay as long as possible. The rooms are beautifully furnished and luxurious, and the public areas are full of spots to enjoy a glass of wine and relax. The quinta is also home to one of the area's best restaurants, serving elegant Galician dishes and with a wine list featuring excellent wines from Rías Baixas and other Galician regions.
NH Collection A Coruña Finisterre
This 5-star hotel in the center of A Coruña offers luxury accommodation in an ideal location. The hotel’s rooms offer views of the ocean. The bars, restaurants and sights of A Coruña are just steps away.
WHERE YOU’LL GO
PORTO
Port country is two places in one connected by the Douro River itself. The city of Porto lies where the river empties into the Atlantic. Built up the steep river banks, Portugal’s second city has a sleepy, forgotten enchantment to it that helps explain its recent renaissance.
When you emerge from the winding streets that lead from the river up to “downtown” Porto you can see across to Vila Nova de Gaia, ground zero for port wine. The most famous sweet wine in the world has been aged in this town for hundreds of years. The British were the shippers, lending their names to the signs that light up the night sky and the bottles that line shop windows: Sandeman, Warre’s, Taylor’s, Graham’s, whose storehouses are filled with barrels black from decades aging port. Yet if you head out of Porto looking for the vineyards, you’ll have to go way up-river before finding them, to the Douro Valley.
GALICIA
The sun is noticeably weaker once you cross the mountains that separate Spain’s greenest corner from the bleached expanse that is the rest of the country. The buildings are always forming shadows that leave you cold even on warm days and the adapted locals can always be seen with a jacket nearby if out for more than a brief jaunt. You can feel winter coming here and get the sense that it is always coming, even at high noon. The covered walkways, stone arches over stone sidewalks, will soon beckon to native and pilgrim alike, but when the sun shines the terraces are teeming with life and no one wants to be inside.
Galicia is made of stone, physically and spiritually. You can see it in people’s eyes, their skin. They’ve been hewn from it, battered against the cold stone faces of the coastal cliffs, hauled boulders on their backs to clear their fields, carved it into blocks and tiles and even wheels. Like granite they’re slow to warm but once they do they stay that way, radiating intense energy that can fill a room. This is an old people, defined most of all by their ability to endure, to persist. The cities and towns and villages and pazos and walls are a testament to thousands of years of stubbornness.
The color that dominates the grey of stone is green. Everything is growing everywhere. Grass with exploding patches of clover. Trees with twisted arms covered in ivy and creepers. Thick underbrush with layers upon layers of saplings and bushes and vines and little plants with no name except in the old tongue. Every Gallego seems to need a stone house and a little piece of green land, a direct connection to the earth and its fertility. The little patches of greenery and the thick forests of the hills and mountains are the most noticeable differences from the rest of Spain, but they also speak to the character of the people. The Gallego has a fundamental mistrust of modernity and sophistication that stems from and manifests through their connection to the land. The fields and streams of the ancestral village are the source of truth and morality here. The great cities of Galicia have risen up with industry and culture, but the heart of each citizen lives in the forest with the pagan deities whose names are lost to time but whose significance has never waned.
GALICIAN CUISINE
Galician cuisine is famous for its seafood. Less well known are the inland dishes using beef, pork, octopus and garden produce. The pride of Galicia is pulpo, octopus caught laboriously in the rocky inlets of the coast but served all over the region, commonly in thin slices on a wooden plate and dusted with Spanish paprika. The coastal towns and cities seem to overflow with seafood that anywhere else would be reserved for the finest restaurants: white and blue fish perfect for grilling or baking; clams and mussels and a galaxy of shellfish with no real English translations; crabs and shrimp and lobsters and delicacies like percebes, alien-looking goose barnacles beloved by locals and visitors. The countryside cooking of Galicia reveres the pig and the cow, featuring sausages and hams and cheeses that change from village to village. The soups and stews of Galician home cooking are hearty and often use local greens and potatoes. It's a totally different cuisine from anywhere else in Spain, perhaps finding more kinship with the tables of northern Portugal, but Galicia is certainly among the best places in Spain to eat great food.
Galician cuisine combines the bounty of its extensive Atlantic coastline with the hearty flavors of the countryside and the mountains. To go with a distinct cuisine, you need distinct wines, and Galicia has an abundance of unique wine. The coastal areas of the Rías Baixas are home to the Albariño grape, the iconic Galician white and frequent companion of local seafood. The best Galician Albariños are among the greatest white wines available anywhere, with depth, complexity, and the potential to age for years in bottle. The inland regions of Galicia, less known than the coast, are home to several wine regions making truly stunning wines today. Ribeira Sacra, Valdeorras, and Bierzo form a trio of regions where the red Mencía and white Godello grapes dominate and produce widely varying styles of wine that transmit soil and geography into the glass. The rise of these regions has put Galicia on the global wine map for more than Albariño. Even lesser known Ribeiro, with its rich variety of indigenous grapes, has become a source of excitement. The subtlety of Galician wines is refreshing, but the quality speaks for itself. Galician wines are here to stay among Spanish wine royalty.
RÍAS BAIXAS
Rías Baixas is the most famous wine region in Galicia, though it is often known simply by its characteristic grape: Albariño. Rías are inlets of the Atlantic similar to fjords. They give the vineyards a very strong Atlantic influence, and the humidity means the vines must be trained on high trellises to prevent mildew. Soils in the heart of Rías Baixas are granitic. Nearly all wine here is white and dominated by Albariño. These wines are fresh with lively acidity that makes them the perfect pairing with the local seafood-dominated cuisine.
WHAT’S INCLUDED
6 nights hotel, double occupancy, breakfast daily, expert private guides, private tours, premium tastings at wineries, restaurant concierge service and all reservations, private luxury transport
NOT INCLUDED
flights to/from Spain or Portugal, gratuities to guides and drivers, extras in hotels, travel insurance (recommended)
EPICUREAN WAYS ADVANTAGE
We pride ourselves on our discerning taste in hotels, a concierge approach to restaurants for you, and our long experience in the world of wine enabling us to select wineries worth visiting and arrange premium tastings at each winery.
You will be accompanied by a driver-guide during your wine touring. Your visits and tastings will be private and with the winemaker, a family member or an expert who knows the winery and the wines well. We work with the wineries to make sure that you taste the best and most representative wines during each visit. It is sometimes possible to arrange extended tastings that include old vintages or rare wines. We have an extensive group of wineries whose owners we know and with whom we work regularly, so we can guarantee high-level visits even if a winery has to be substituted. If you have an interest in visiting a particular producer please let us know.
We include restaurant concierge service as part of your trip. Note that our restaurant suggestions are just that–suggestions. Places we love, places to go back to time after time. We recommend these places after years of experience eating in Spain and Portugal together with frequent research and input from our local partners. We aspire to guide your choices with information on the styles of cuisine and restaurants; the choice on where to eat is yours based on your preferences and desires.
We have extensive experience with hotels ranging from 5-star luxury properties to private boutique hotels. Let us know your preferences and we will tailor the hotel choices for you.
All tours, experiences and hotels are subject to availability and will be confirmed upon booking the trip.
TRIP PRICES
Note that we can customize this trip for you. Add days in your arrival or departure city or in other locations or make changes to the experiences, winery visits, restaurants, or hotels included in the trip. Whatever it is, we’re here to work with you. Once you’re happy with the trip plan and have some idea of your dates we will send you the price.