Insider’s Culinary Tours in Spain:Travelers Come in Contact With Local Spanish Culture and Cuisine

July 28, 2008 - PRLog -- CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia –  Epicurean Ways and Gerry Dawes announce the launch of two Insider’s Culinary Tours in Spain: A Taste of Andalucía (southern Spain) and Culinary Adventures in the Spanish Levante: A Land of a Thousand Rices (Valencia and Alicante). The tours are scheduled for October and November of 2008, and March and May of 2009, and will be guided by Gerry Dawes and Jane Gregg.

Gerry Dawes http://www.gerrydawesspain.blogspot.com/, a writer who has led a number of culinary tours in Spain, is considered a leading expert on Spanish food and wine. Gerry Dawes’s articles have appeared in Food Arts, Wine News, Santé and Foods From Spain News. His expertise is recognized in Spain as well as in the English-speaking world, having been awarded the Premio Nacional de Gastronomía (Spain’s National Gastronomy Award) by the Academia Española de Gastronomía (Spanish Academy of Gastronomy) in 2003.

Epicurean Ways http://epicureanways.com/ is a U.S. based company specializing in culinary tours in Spain.

Jane Gregg, Director of Epicurean Ways, says this about Gerry Dawes: “Gerry brings amazing energy and enthusiasm to his tours. He knows more about Spanish food and wine than almost anyone I’ve ever met. He also knows the places, the restaurants– famous and not–the chefs, the winery owners. He can show you the out-of-the-way restaurant with great seafood or the best winery in the area.”

Both the Andalucía and the Valencia tours will focus on the extraordinary cuisine of the two regions, giving play to traditional food and artisanal ingredients, and to innovative chefs and avant-garde techniques.



In recent years, Spanish cuisine has caught the attention of the likes of American chefs and food writers Mark Bittman (The New York Times), Mario Batali (Babbo), and Terrance Brennan (Picholine and Artisanal), among others.

José Andrés, the Washington, D.C. chef, restaurateur (Jaleo), and cookbook author, hosted the 26-part PBS series Made in Spain, exploring Spain’s 17 culinary (autonomous) regions. It aired this spring in the U.S. See http://www.josemadeinspain.com/home.htm

The Insider’s Culinary Tours go one step further. Not only do they immerse the traveler in culinary experiences, but they introduce them to the lifestyle that is Spanish cuisine. The secrets to Spanish cuisine lie in the extraordinary freshness of its ingredients and the relative simplicity of the traditional cooking methods. But what is perhaps most remarkable about Spanish cuisine in Andalucía is the tradition of the tapeo–going out for tapas. Tapas are inseparable from the tapeo, and as such cannot be reduced to a set of recipes.  As Ferrán Adrià writes in  Más que tapas (More Than Tapas) (Vivendi Publicaciones, 2008, p.8), “If Andalucía is more than tapas, tapas are much more than food; they identify us, because they reveal a way of living as a society, of coming together around food and drink, which ceases to be a physiological fact and becomes a social act.”


Andalusian Cuisine

Andalucía is the gateway through which many of the ingredients used in Spanish–and for that matter European–cooking entered the West. These ingredients, cooking methods and ways of eating (small dishes or tapas) were brought by the Romans, the Moors and the Jews, and from the New World. The region assimilated those products, and over the centuries has steadfastly maintained culinary traditions and cooking methods.

What has changed today is that in the wake of Spain’s gastronomic revolution of the last fifteen years–spearheaded by chefs such as Adrià, Arzak, Subijana, Ruscalleda and Roca, to name a few–a number of young, innovative Andalusian chefs have planted the seeds of an Andalusian culinary revolution, experimenting and stretching the repertoire. A Taste of Andalucía and immerses the traveler in both extremes of Andalucía’s culinary continuum.

The Taste of Andalucía Tours

The Taste of Andalucía tours will explore the Roman, Moorish, Jewish and New World influences on the cuisine, as well as the traditional British dominance in sherry making in Andalucía. Travelers will explore exceptional artisanal foods such as jamón ibérico (Spanish cured ham), artisanal olive oil and sherry wine vinegar; visit sherry bodegas to learn about traditional sherry-making methods; and dine on traditional Spanish and Andalusian cuisine.

Sherry (jerez) is the quintessential Andalusian wine. Private tastings in renowned bodegas in Jerez de la Frontera and in Montilla, near Córdoba, are designed to acquaint the curious with the types of sherry and the solera system of wine aging.

Travelers on the Taste of Andalucía tours come in contact with local Andalusian culture, meeting chefs and winemakers and learning first-hand about the cuisine and the wine. They experience some of the finest regional food and restaurants in the country. The tours explore innovative Andalusian cuisine as well, with dinners at restaurants breaking new culinary ground.

The culinary journey visits eight cities in Andalucía: Granada, Ronda, Cádiz, Sanlúcar de Barrameda, El Puerto de Santa María, Jerez de la Frontera, Sevilla and Córdoba, as well as some of the famous pueblos blancos (white villages) in Cádiz province.

Travelers on this tour will visit the principal sites of cultural and historical significance in each city, including gypsy caves in Sacromonte, one of Spain’s oldest bullrings in Ronda, the Alhambra in Granada, the Alcázar in Sevilla, and the Mezquita in Córdoba. Spain’s Moorish heritage is most visible in the Andalusian architecture. Many of the most famous constructions are a legacy of the Moors who occupied Spain for 700 years, until expelled by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492.

A Taste of Andalucía trips are nine days/eight nights. Cost (land only): $5600 per person, based on double occupancy, for the 2008 departures. Most meals, and a lot of wine, included. Accommodations: Four-star hotels.

Two trips are scheduled for 2008: October 4-12 and November 12-20 departures.
Two trips are scheduled for 2009: March and May departures.

Culinary Adventures in the Spanish Levante: A Land of a Thousand Rices tours are eight day/seven night trips. 2009 dates include March and May. The March tour is planned to coincide with the Fallas festival in Valencia. Itinerary and cost coming soon.



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Jane Gregg, a tireless explorer of Spain, is the Director of Epicurean Ways, a culinary travel company specializing in Spanish cuisine and wine tours, based in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Barcelona, Spain. Epicurean Ways offers culinary journeys in five regions in Spain: Andalucía, Catalonia, Valencia, Madrid and the Basque Country.

Gerry Dawes, based in New York, is a food and wine writer specializing in Spain, who travels frequently to Spain to speak at gastronomic conferences, research Spanish food and wine and lead culinary tours.

Both Gerry Dawes and Jane Gregg are passionate about Spain and ardent observers/consumers of Spanish food and wine.


Contacts:

Jane Gregg (Epicurean Ways) 866-642-2917 or 434-228-0641 or jane@epicureanways.com

To learn more about the Insider’s Culinary Tour, A Taste of Andalucía, visit http://www.epicureanways.com/trips/a-taste-of-andalucia

To find out more about Epicurean Ways, visit http://www.epicureanways.com



Gerry Dawes 914-414-6982 or gerrydawes@aol.com

To find out more about Gerry Dawes, or to read his articles, visit http://www.gerrydawesspain.blogspot.com/

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About Epicurean Ways: Offers culinary travel experiences that are intimate and tailor-made, immersing you in the food and wine landscapes in settings at once exotic and enchanting.

Gerry Dawes and Jane Gregg are the guides on the Food and Wine Tours, A Taste of Andalucía and Culinary Adventures in the Spanish Levante: A Land of a Thousand Rices. The tours result from their years of experience traveling, eating, drinking and cooking in Spain. Gerry and Jane will take you to food-and-wine-worthy parts of Spain where they have lived and traveled, and introduce you to the gastronomy, the places, the chefs, vitners and producers. You will eat in a number of authentic Spanish restaurants, taste wine in cellars personally chosen by Gerry, meet the winemakers and chefs along the way, and stay in unique hotels throughout.
Epicurean Ways offers culinary tours and cooking vacations in Andalucia, Seville, Barcelona, Catalonia, Madrid, San Sebastian, Valencia in Spain.