Jane Gregg - Experience the many flavors of...

Culinary Travel with Epicurean Ways

We share with you the pleasures of the table in Spain. We do this by exploring kitchens, markets, olive oil mills, vineyards, and tables. We take you off the beaten track to places where innovative winemaking methods pose a counterpoint to traditional regional cuisines, where avant-garde cuisines are created in 15th-century stone houses. Whether it’s a behind-the-kitchen-door cooking class with a renowned chef, a bodega tour with the vintner, a visit to an olive oil mill or a private tapas tour, you will find authentic regional Spanish cuisine.

Spain holds within it a number of remarkable regional cuisines and wines emanating from diverse landscapes and cultures. Regional variations in Spain include languages and cultural identities as well. Culinary tours with Epicurean Ways explore these regional cuisines, wines and cultures.

Our Tours

Our Food & Wine Tours allow the participants to savor a region in Spain with a small group of fellow food and wine travelers. These small-group culinary travel experiences are intimate, maximizing your contact with local chefs, winemakers and artisanal food producers.

Gerry Dawes and Jane Gregg will be your personal guides on four distinct Food and Wine Tours in 2009. The tours result from their years of experience traveling, eating, drinking and cooking in Spain. Gerry and Jane will take you to the parts of Spain where they have lived and traveled, and introduce you to the gastronomy, places, chefs, vitners and local producers. You will eat in a number of traditional Spanish restaurants, taste wine in cellars personally chosen by Gerry, and stay in unique hotels.

Sustainable Travel

We support international sustainable travel by providing local authentic culinary travel experiences. In doing so, we may help to preserve the unique food and wine cultures of the regions we explore. We belong to Sustainable Travel International.

Who We Are

Jane Gregg, Founder and Director of Epicurean Ways, is a long-time lover and passionate student of Spanish culture and cuisines. She studied Spanish Literature in Salamanca, at La Universidad Complutense de Madrid and at the University of Minnesota. She worked as a teacher and translator for many years in Madrid. Since 2003 she has lived in Cádiz, Pontevedra, Barcelona, and the Costa Brava, and now divides her time between Charlottesville, Virginia, and Catalunya in Spain. She shares the guiding of the cooking tours with local professionals in Spain.

Gerry Dawes is a leading expert in Spanish gastronomy. Gerry lived in Andalucía for many years and these days he travels to Spain frequently throughout the year to speak at gastronomic conferences, research Spanish food and wine, and lead culinary tours. When not in Spain, he can be found in New York.

Our Chefs

Willy trained at the Cordon Bleu in Paris, worked as a chef in both Paris and London before coming to Sevilla to open the highly acclaimed restaurant, Pocio. Willy’s signature cuisine is based on traditional Spanish cooking with a creative flair. Willy teaches our cooking classes in Sevilla.

Vicenç grew up in Australia and has lived in the Empordà region of Catalunya since coming to Girona years ago to begin his culinary studies. His restaurant in La Plaça de Madremanya serves inspired traditional Catalan cuisine.

Alicia spent many years as a professional dancer in Barcelona before turning her attention to her other love–cooking. She has been teaching Catalan cooking for many years in Barcelona and Masroig, in the Montsant wine region of Catalonia.

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Spanish Food & Wine Tours

Cooking is art in motion 
–Ferrán Adrià

Experience Culinary Spain

If you are attracted to vibrant Mediterranean cuisine you have come to the right place. If you love discovering new foods and wines and tasting them at their source you will be delighted with an Epicurean Ways Spanish food and wine adventure.

Our insider’s culinary tours and cooking vacations in Spain show you the renowned as well as the back-roads eateries and wineries, artisanal foods and chefs.

Distinctive Tours

Our distinctive tours are personalized for small groups. Select a tour that is designed and ready to go, customize a trip based on your interests or use our designed tours as the basis for your custom tour.

Small-group Tours

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 goes like this: cooking classes, winery visits and tastings, visits to some of Spain’s grand markets, tours of olive oil mills and guided tastings–or catas–dining in restaurants serving authentic regional cuisine and visits to specialty food shops and artisanal producers.

Cultural Tours

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.

Custom Journeys

We can design an epicurean journey for two or more; a culinary and cultural vacation for your family group; corporate incentive trips; tours for independent travelers. 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.

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From the Blog:

 

Churros con chocolate

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.

 

Spain On the Road Again

Don’t miss the new television series Spain… On the Road Again on PBS. It’s a culinary journey through Spain with celebrity chef Mario Batali, Gwyneth Paltrow, Claudia Bassols and my favorite New York Times food columnist Mark Bittman. The ten episodes cover the primary culinary regions and many well known restaurants in Spain. And best of all, the show’s website includes recipes for some favorites such as paella, tortilla española, fabada and pisto manchego.

Spanish Food Online

Are you cooking Spanish food at home and looking for authentic Spanish pimentón (smoked paprika), jamón (Iberian ham), chorizo or olive oils? You can find everything at La Tienda, one of the best online stores for sourcing Spanish ingredients here in the U.S. Their website. has a wonderful collection of articles on Spanish food as well. Check out their Product Guides for information on Spanish products.

A Thanksgiving Journey in Spain

We have just added Thanksgiving dates for the Taste of Andalucía Tour. We will journey through Andalucía November 23 through December 1, guided by Spanish gastronomy writer Gerry Dawes, visiting Granada, Ronda, Cádiz, Jerez, Sevilla and Córdoba.

Over the course of the 10 days the activities will include guided Spanish wine tastings, tapas tours in each city, a country olive oil mill visit and private winery visits in Ronda, Jerez de la Frontera and Montilla-Moriles. The emphasis of the tour is on Spanish cuisine at its most authentic, featuring local ingredients, renowned chefs, personalized menus and private tours. An optional cooking class with chef Willy Moya in Seville will be available.

The tour includes private guided visits to the principal sites of the seven centuries of Moorish and Jewish heritage in southern Spain. These sites include the Alhambra and Generalife gardens in Granada, the Mezquita and Medina Azahara in Córdoba, the Barrio de Santa Cruz and the Real Alcázar in Sevilla, and the white villages sprinkled throughout the region.

Barcelona Tips

This article from Yahoo News has some common-sense tips on how to eat and get around economically in Barcelona. To be sure, the menú del día (daily lunch menu) is a money saving three course meal complete with wine. Look for restaurants full of locals, far from the Ramblas. Likely neighborhoods for quality food and fair prices: El Raval (just off the Ramblas) and l’Esquerra de l’Eixample (the Left Eixample).

Tapas bars are another lunch option. Two of the best loved are Cervesería la Catalana (Mallorca 236) and Cuidad Condal (Rambla de Catalunya 18), both in the Eixample.

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