Food and wine touring is one of the best methods of travel, and a growing trend. You meet locals, often take the road less traveled, taste exquisite regional cuisine, sample rare wines, and try a culture on for size. These scrumptious tours come in all flavors and cater to groups.
Cooking classes abroad
My mom and I participated in a group cooking class while in Florence for a destination wedding. 20 guests from the wedding bonded, made new friends, and spread the spirit of the wedding through the days leading up to the ceremony. With the chef supervising, ingredients prepped, and kitchen utensils at hand, we broke into smaller groups and worked on our respective culinary assignments. Mom and I were with the tort table following a simple recipe for a lemon tort while others prepared a beef entrée, appetizers, and salads. After baking and cooking, we all feasted on our homemade Italian food and drank vino at a big banquet table. Bonus: We all got to take home the recipes and aprons. To this day, it's still one of my most memorable meals. Thanks to Apicius, the Culinary Institute of Florence.
Wine-tasting abroad
The same destination wedding trip to Italy also gave me the opportunity to take a small group wine-tasting tour. We visited quaint, lesser-known wineries and stopped for lunch at a local restaurant in a rural village just outside of Florence. Chianti's 300 acres between Florence and Siena are filled with hills and various wine-growing conditions, producing a range of bouquets. We sampled soft wines, dry wines, and robust wines not marketed in the U.S. Apparently, the American market demands certain grapes and types of wine, but often the local vintners shake their heads in wonder because they know the superior bottles don't sell well on the mass market. Reason alone to do a wine-tasting tour: rare finds. These tours are a great way to meld with the rural areas, sample the fruits of its earth, and pass the time with a little culture.
Pick and choose your favorite culinary tour. Your body, mind, and gut will thank you for it, and it's ideal for group trips. A few suggestions to whet your appetite:
Wine-tasting tours
Tuscany wine tours
Bordeaux wine tours
Napa Valley wineries
Tasting Australia is the biggest wine-tasting event the country, takes place in October
South Australia wine-tasting tours (source: travelgirl magazine, Sept./Oct. 2006)
Beer-tasting tours
Guinness tours in Dublin
Anheuser-Busch Brewery tours in Los Angeles
Redhook Brewery tours in Washington state (near Seattle) or New Hampshire
Samuel Adams Brewery tours in Boston
Food & culinary tours and classes
Pacific Northwest cooking classes and tours
Cooking classes in France, Spain, and Italy
Italian cooking classes
Mexican cooking tours
Food & music tours (eat 'til you ache, dance 'til you drop)
Chateau St. Michelle Winery concerts in Woodinville (near Seattle)
Celtic music and food tours in Ireland and Scotland
Miscellaneous culinary tours
Culinary cruises with world-famous chef menus (think Wolfgang Puck)
Group ice cream (gelato) tours of Italy
Taking a culinary or wine tour with family or friends is a priceless experience, great for girls getaways, bachelorette parties, wedding guest activities, and so on. To plan a group culinary tour, you can start with TripHub's group trip planning services.
We operate culinary travel mostly on the east coast including New England & Tennessee where we sell many Celebrity Chef events.
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Posted by: Chris Donnelly | July 05, 2007 at 05:53 AM
We offer a culinary tour with hands-on cooking classes at the Tropical Cooking School of Costa Rica. Located in the mountain area of the Central Valley, the school offers a week of classes combined with visits to a working hacienda producing coffee, macadamia nuts and sugar cane, a hike to an archeaological site, rafting and local cultural experiences.
Posted by: Donna Sullivan | July 13, 2007 at 12:37 PM
Puerto Rico finaly has well organized gastronomy tours, activities and many lead by CIA grads as host chefs. Most are activities focus in learning about tropical produce, dine-arounds in San Juan, new and old city location restaurants. Others centralized restaurant concierge services headed by Chef Norma Barreto well excelently handled by her, including a quick review of most important raw fruits and veggies in basket she took along, to review prior to dinner, as tabletop conversation.. Nora is a fully bilingual profesional during my interview regarding suggested several trip at short drving distance from my condo unit. I met Chef Barreto while attempting to rent this apartment in Rio Mar resort. She taught me what culinary tourism is all about during my recent summer holiday uncommon vacation to the east corner of the Island.
Posted by: Chef Norma Llop | July 17, 2008 at 06:33 PM