Andalucía

A world within a world, Andalucía occupies Spain’s far south, a land of bright sun and vivid colors, traditional Spanish culture, delicious food, and friendly, complex people. This region is defined by the coast and the mountains. With coastline on the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, you’ll find bustling coastal cities, fishing towns next to wild beaches, and every kind of seafood imaginable. The mountain villages make exquisite gourmet products, such as jamón ibérico, goat’s milk cheese, and a variety of quality wines. You might know Andalucía for its beautiful cities: Sevilla, Córdoba, Málaga, Cádiz, Granada, and more. Andalusian cities are certainly among Spain’s most charming. But beyond them lie the towns, villages, and hamlets that hold the key to understanding the enchanted south. We present you with an Andalusia worth traveling for, in depth, genuine and personal.

Barcelona & Catalonia

These days Barcelona might be the most famous city in Spain. The Ciudad Condal has an inimitable charm, like Paris crossed with a beach town. Spectacular architecture, world-class restaurants, and a strong Catalan character under the surface. Outside the capital, Cataluña shows its full strength. This is the most distinct part of Spain, with its own language, cuisine, wine, history, culture… The Costa Brava’s dramatic cliffs and secluded towns have attracted savvy travelers for years. Girona is the most perfect little city you could imagine. South of Barcelona you’ll find the heart of Catalan wine country, with Penedès, Priorat, Montsant, and many more quality areas making some of Spain’s best wine. Best of all, everywhere you go you can feel the strength of Catalan identity poured into each and every food and wine product. For the Catalanes, there is no more important symbol.

Rioja

Hilltop towns with monasteries and castles overlooking vineyards, underground caves for aging wine, bustling pintxos bars and a long history of producing Spain’s finest wines.

Rioja feels a world apart from the Basque Country nearby. Towns and villages are dominated by ancient castles, churches and monasteries, but most of all wineries. Vineyards are everywhere, but wineries have always been in town in the Rioja. In honorary wine capital Haro, the Station Quarter is full of them, their famous names and tasting rooms beckoning. The bordering mountains protecting Rioja to the north and south make this region a wine sanctuary. Great wine is everywhere: in the pintxos bars of Haro and Logroño, at the traditional restaurants in Laguardia and Casalarreina, in the cavernous cellars of Michelin star restaurants. The food ranges from rustic to refined, but it’s always hearty. Above all, the Rioja is beautiful. Perfectly preserved medieval villages, rolling hills covered in vines whose leaves paint them in jewel tones every fall, sprawling old wineries full of aged barrels next to psychedelic new complexes. You could come here just to look at it all, but thankfully the wine is as beautiful and diverse as the country itself.

Lingering over leisurely meals accompanied by the best wines of the region you will find yourself thinking that you have found the perfect food and wine escape.

The Basque Country

Gentle green hills dotted with farmhouses, a stunningly beautiful rocky coastline, an ancient language, strong Basque identity, and arguably the best food in Spain.

When it comes to food, the Basque Country seems to have it all. There are scores of Michelin Star restaurants, born from the Basque response to France’s nouvelle cuisine in the 1970s. The culture of culinary innovation has spread across Spain since then, but the Basque Country is still the heart of modern Spanish food. All of that creativity had to come from somewhere, though, and here it is the richness of ingredients and recipes. The Basque countryside offers wild-caught Atlantic fish, foraged mushrooms, dry-aged beef, sheep’s milk cheese, fresh vegetables, and artisan cider and the local white wine Txakoli. The quality ingredients are everywhere here, not just in the manicured dining rooms of starred restaurants. Pintxos bars (Basque tapas bars) compete to have the best and most creative tapas. Seaside restaurants serve the best grilled fish you’ll ever have, and in the hamlets of the countryside, simple recipes shine with the flavors of the hills. This is the only part of Spain with cooking clubs where members use professional kitchens to cook for each other and their friends, and where the kitchen is often larger than the club. Even economical midday menus in the cities will surprise you with the purity of flavor in their dishes. We know you can eat all the Michelin star meals you could want in the Basque Country. But trust me: you won’t want many because the food everywhere you go is so good. I say eat like the Basques do: traditional food made with great products sourced and produced in Euskadi, in bars and restaurants and cooking clubs. Then you’ll understand what all the fuss has been about.

Ribera del Duero

The highway heading east out of Valladolid hugs the Duero River all the way to the end of the Ribera del Duero wine region in Soria province. The wineries start right away. Converted monasteries and gleaming modern structures sit surrounded by fields of vineyards. Blink and you’ll miss a famous name: Mauro, Vega Sicilia, Pingus, Pesquera. The most famous region title goes to Rioja, but this is where the legends of Spanish fine wine bcome real. For the highest wine region in Spain it’s surprisingly flat country, interrupted by castles and old watchtowers. The towns cluster along the Duero where they can, dominated by structures that seem older than the towns themselves. Roast lamb is the classic dish here, considered a perfect match for the powerful local reds. Explore a wine list, or better yet a winery, and you’ll soon find more than power here. Whether from famous names or small vignerons, today’s Riberas can be elegant, restrained, and absolutely divine.

Madrid

The Spanish capital was built exactly in the middle of the country, much to the chagrin of locals trying to get to the beach for their summer vacation. Yet when you visit, you won’t mind, because Madrid has everything you could want in a city. Great hotels, restaurants, boutiques and especially museums are everywhere. A huge old center is great to get lost in, with neighborhoods from swanky to multicultural to alternative. What really makes Madrid unique is its traditional character and its relationship to the rest of Spain. This has always been the go-to destination for people from all corners of the country, so Madrid has a little bit of everywhere. You’ll find traditional central Spanish restaurants serving country favorites, Galician seafood specialists, Basque pintxos bars, and Andalusian tapas bars that could be in Sevilla. Experience Madrid as the madrileños do, an electric combination that brings in the modern and the classic, the true heart of Spain.

Portugal

Portugal is a nation shaped by the Atlantic. The beaches of the Algarve, Lisbon and Porto’s proximity to the sea and history of trade, wine regions from Setúbal to Vinho Verde, the sea is there. Perhaps the openness of a seafaring nation is what makes Portugal such a great place to visit. Traditions are alive here, and people will be happy to show them to you with pride. The rarified exists as well, but even there chefs are never too busy to talk and winemakers will invite you to eat with the family. Snobbishness is a rarity, and the opposite is much more common. Maybe that’s why it’s taken so long for the rest of the world to discover Portugal: they were too humble to tell everyone what amazing treasures they had. Lisbon is a true jewel, with its hills overlooking a sea of red roofs and Atlantic freshness. Porto feels frozen in time, until you see the amazing new hotels, restaurants, and port lodges. And the wine, where to start? If you want to taste some of the best-kept secrets in Europe made from grapes you can neither place nor pronounce, there’s no better place.

Galicia

Galicia in northwestern Spain forms the corner of what is known as Green Spain extending from the Basque Country’s border with France and encompassing the Basque Country, Cantabria, Asturias and Galicia. With landscapes atypical of the more arid south and Mediterranean coast, Galicia exhibits Celtic characteristics not limited to their use of the gaita (bagpipes) in the traditional music. The rural wooded and hilly interior is covered in oak and chestnut trees and punctuated by historic granite pazos (manor houses) and hamlets and villages, some of which are, sadly, empty, abandoned in the migration to the cities and opportunities in the Americas. The misty fjord-riddled coastal areas produce much of the finest shellfish in Spain and the majority of the Albariño wines from the Rias Baixas appellation.

On or near the Galician coast is also where many of the cities are found: Santiago de Compostela, famous for its cathedral begun in the 11th century and the finish line of the Camino de Santiago; Pontevedra, a lovely city with the largest medieval center in Galicia after Santiago, and largely pedestrianized since 1999; the fishing port of Vigo; and A Coruña on the northern coast.