Spanish Food & Wine Ways

Cooking is art in motion
–Ferrán Adrià

Experience

Journey with us to epicurean Spain, a land of many cuisines. Our culinary tours and cooking vacations reveal the essence of Spain.

Our culinary trips in Spain are unrivaled because we are insiders. We specialize in in Spanish travel and food & wine.

Experts

We have assembled a team of experts who live in Spain or travel there frequently. We are Spanish, American and British. We are insiders showing you the back roads and hard-to find people, places and meals

Personalized Tours

Our tours are unique because they are personalized for small groups. You can select a tour that is designed and ready to go, or customize a trip based on your interests. You can use our designed tours as the basis for your custom tour.

Small Groups

All that is needed for a private tour is a group of two or more gastronomically curious travelers. And an idea of where you would like to go or what you would like to eat. Culinary and wine tours make ideal vacations for your extended family group, friends, girlfriend getaways, clubs or corporate retreats.

Culinary travel with Epicurean Ways can be a trip with cooking classes. Winery visits and tastings, visits to some of Spain’s grand markets, visits to olive oil mills and guided tastings–or catas–restaurants serving authentic regional cuisine and visits to specialty food shops and artisanal producers make up our culinary tours.

History and Culture

Our trips have a cultural focus as well. We visit towns and sites of historical and artistic significance. Some of our favorite places are the medieval villages of Catalunya and Navarra or the white Moorish hill towns of Andalucía.

You will experience Spanish cuisine rooted in Roman-Moorish-Jewish-New World traditions, yet perfectly contemporary. You will have the chance to taste Spanish wines which stand among the world’s best. Culinary experiences in Spain are sure to awaken your palate and stir your imagination. Join us!

Epicurean Places

Picture a Spanish kitchen deep in rural Spain where wood-smoke buttressed walls are a testament to the centuries of roasting lamb over grapevine cuttings. Twenty-first century kitchens creating avant-garde masterpieces based on local products. Priorat vineyards with centenary garnatxa vines scaling the mountainsides. Glasses of Andalucía’s great straw-amber-ruby colored sherries lined up in the vaulted coolness of a bodega in Jerez.

Travel with us to epicurean Spain, an inspired land and ever a source of surprise and creativity.

Custom Travel

We can design your custom epicurean journey. We can arrange culinary trips and cooking vacations for couples, groups of friends, multi-generational family groups, wine clubs or corporate groups. We offer cuisine or wine focused travel, or a combination of the two. Trips are available in Andalucía, Madrid, Valencia, Rioja-Navarra, San Sebastián-Bilbao, Priorat, Barcelona, Girona and Extremadura. Call us to talk about your ideal epicurean experience in Spain.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

December 4, 2008

Check out 2 minutes of Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona on YouTube. Worth seeing, if only for Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem’s performances, it’s out on DVD in January of 2009.

Spanish Wines on Wine Spectator’s Top 100

December 4, 2008

The U.S. magazine Wine Spectator has released its annual Top 100 List, their picks of the top 100 wines in the world.

This year the list includes six Spanish wines: one DO Ribera del Duero, one Toro, three DOQ Rioja, and one DO Rías Baixas. The top wine from Spain on the list, Condado de Haza 2005, occupies number 34 and is rated with 93 points. For the complete list, see Wine Spectator.

Slow Food Southern Spanish Style

November 29, 2008

El Puerto de Santa María and Sanlúcar de Barrameda, two legs of the Spanish sherry triangle in Cádiz province, rank among the premier spots in Spain for two things: the tapeo–tapas crawl–and fresh seafood cooked simply. Switching bars every two or three dishes and ordering small portions allows you to sample widely from among shrimp, squid, clams, anchovies, pescaíto frito and a few non-seafood dishes. Fino (sherry) is the drink of choice there to accompany tapas, especially seafood tapas. You can read this article about a tapeo in El Puerto de Santa María.

Spain’s Cheese Country

November 24, 2008

The author of this cheese travel article from the New York Times travels to two of Spain’s northern regions: Asturias and the Basque country. Cabrales, Spain’s blue cow’s cheese, is cured in caves in the mountains of Asturias. The region borders the Bay of Biscay, or Cantabrian Sea, to the north, and Galicia to the west. Idiazábal, a hard sheep’s cheese, is produced in the verdant Basque country bordering France and the Pyrenees Mountains.

Art in Barcelona

November 18, 2008

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

News & Reviews

Holiday Gift Certificates
Give the gift of a Spanish food and wine experience. A gift certificate towards an epicurean journey makes a memorable gift. Call us for details.

Early Booking Discounts
Book a 2009 three day or longer trip by January 31, 2009, and get $150 off companion’s trip.

Trips
New! Food & Wine Trips for 2009. Explore the Rioja and Ribera del Duero wine regions in 4-star style, or journey to Extremadura in search of artisanal cheeses and historic towns. See Rioja wine trip and Extremadura gourmet journey.

New! One-day cooking classes on the Costa Brava in Catalonia. Learn the secrets of Catalan cooking in a private home with an experienced trilingual cook. See One Day Cook. We now have One Day Cooking Classes in a prestigious Sociedad Gastronómica in Bilbao as well.

New for 2009 are Tapas Tours and Olive Oil Tasting Sessions in Barcelona and Tapas Tours in Sevilla. Call us for details or to reserve one.

Spanish Gastronomy Articles
Be sure to read Gerry Dawes’ new article on Ferrán Adrià, Spain’s most famous chef, and his restaurant El Bulli, in Food Arts.

Food writer Peter Kaminsky has an excellent article on Iberian ham in Foods From Spain News.

10 Best Destinations for 2009
Lonely Planet’s annual Blue List of hot destinations, 10 Best Destinations for 2009, includes the Basque Country in Spain and France. See Best in Travel 2009. See our two trips in the Basque Country: Gourmet San Sebastián. and The Wine Roads of Rioja & La Ribera del Duero.

Review: One Day Cook in Barcelona
In order to prepare for my eating club to be opened in Tokyo in late 2009, I have been taking many cooking classes since September, 2007, including 4 Spanish cooking classes (three in Spain and one in NYC). I rate Alicia’s class the best of the four Spanish classes. Instead of teaching Spanish cuisine such as paella and Spanish omelet (taught at two of the four classes), Alicia taught me Catalan dishes such as sofreigit (sauted onion, garlic, tomato and pepper), and picada (nuts, garlic, and herbs), Rock Fish Soup, Catalan Fish Stew, Mussels with Rosemary. Since fresh ingredients are very important to make great meals, Alicia explained these ingredients in detail. Depending on the dish, she uses several kinds of salt. She uses olive oil from the Priorat region and offered me delicious Priorat wines to accompany the meal. Priorat is one of the top three D.O. (designation of origin) in Spain, together with Rioja and Ribera del Duero. Since Priorat is a small wine-producing region, the wine is not widely available in the U. S. It is really a treat.–Etsuko Nakajima, New York, November, 2008

Review: Culinary Andalucía
Roger not only knows everything there is to know about Spanish cuisine and wine, but he also happens to be delightful company. On his tapas tours of Seville, he teaches not by lecturing, but by nimbly leading you through the city, introducing you to the various people and flavors that make up the extensive and often intimidating tapas universe. Questions arise naturally as glasses of beer or manzanilla and plates of garbanzo beans and spinach, jamon iberico, salmorejo and bacalao sandwiches, lightly fried baby squid are placed on the bar in front of you. As charming and funny in Spanish as he is in English, Roger has apparently been given the culinary keys to the city of Seville: the bar owners and workers love him and he is treated like a VIP and, more importantly, a friend. I could imagine no better way to get to know both Sevilla and its stellar cuisine than by following Roger’s brilliant, steady lead for a night.–Christina Ball, Spain on Main/Ecco Italy Language Center, Charlottesville, Virginia, November, 2008

Newsletter

Sign up for our Email Culinary Travel Newsletter

Blog

We post news about our tours, Spanish food and wine news, and other items of interest to culinary travelers on our blog.

Subscribe to our Blog Feed.

Subscribe to Epicurean Ways Blog by Email