Lots of food and drinks this week!

This week has been one of my most epicurean weeks EVER!

It actually started the Friday before with a Tapas Tour for the Swaby, a family composed by the parents and two adult children with the girlfriend of one of them. They had just arrived to Barcelona and thought a Tapas Tour would be a fun way to get introduced to the city on their first evening in town. They were lots of fun to be with, and we laughed a lot! By the way, I picked them up at the Port where they were staying, and as we were leaving it we saw a rainbow over the city!

Then I saw them again on Monday, this time  this time we went on a daytrip to the Penedès Wine Country. We visited 2 cellars there: one organic winery in the middle of the vineyards and then a family-owned traditional cava cellar where we could see them degorging the bottles by hand (now everyone uses machines for that, so it was very unique!). After our 6h daytrip, we had tried 10 different wines and cavas!

With the Swabys t the cava maker's, where one of the underground cellars is called "Marta"! 

(not after me, of course, but after one of their family members...)

Then on Tuesday and Wednesday I went back to my usual sightseeing tours, although funnily enough I kept crossing the Swabys everywhere! Haha, I love this kind of coincidences!

Then I had Mr. Cassidy, that was visiting Barcelona on his own. We first had a Gaudi tour that also included 2 stops somewhere to get a drink (you guessed right: more wine!) and then the next day I took him on a Tapas Tour that we ended with a nice stroll along the Barceloneta waterfront to walk off the food.



And actually, that tour was the second Epicurean Tour of the day! In the morning I showed around Merrill O'Ryan and her friends, and after exploring the Boqueria Market we went to the tapas bars. They were actually more interested in drinking than eating, so we had lots of bier, wine, cava and sangria!

And now... I'm ready for some dieting, if you allow me to!   ; )

**** To know more about my Barcelona tours, visit Foreverbarcelona.

Excursion to the Penedès Wine Country with the Cantrell

The Cantrell family was in Barcelona on a corporation trip, but decided to take a private tour to the Penedès, one of the closest Wine Countries around Barcelona. Since they were very interested, we decided to do a 6h trip (a bit longer than the average halfday, that only includes 1 winery), so we could visit 2 cellars.

First we went to Gramona, a great family-owned cellar specialising in cava, the Catalan sparkling. Their cellar is very old-fashioned and it took us back to 100 years ago! We also were lucky to see one of the workers degorging the bottles manually. See a video I took on a previous daytrip here. They also took us to see their vinyards in the outskirts of the village and their modern winery.

Then we proceeded to Albet i Noya, pioneers in organic wine production in Spain. It made a very nice contrast with Gramona, as they are not so much into cava (and the process to make each product is different), and also because Gramona is located inside a village, and Albet i Noya is an old farm in the countryside. We also learnt about how organic production works, and about the owner's project to recuperate old local vines.

We had beautiful tastings in each of the cellars!
The picture was taken in Albet i Noya. Sorry for the quality of the picture. I only had my cellphone, and the light wasn't too good.

The Ellis daytrip to the Wine Country.

The Ellis family booked me for a few tours in Barcelona. In our last day we had planned to go to the Penedès Wine country and Montserrat. At first I had suggested we visited the Codorniu cellar, the largest in the world, because of its spectacularity. But after spending a few days with them I got to know them better and when I saw they were so much into food and wine and they had been to some emblematic French cellars already, I decided they'd appreciate something else.

So I changed bookings and got a private tour of the Gramona cellars, a local family-owned winery that has won many international prizes.
We were received there by their Communications person, who showed us personally their old cellar. That day there were people working in the old building (most of the day, the staff is working in their modern venue at the vinyards), so we were lucky to see a lady glueing labels by hand, another lady checking the machine that wraps the cork, and we even had a demostration of how they degorge the botels by hand. That was so unique! In most cellars degorging is done by machines who freeze the neck of the bottle to remove the sediments. Only very skilled workers are able to do it manually!
See my video! (oh, I'm so glad to have this video well recorded... the other time I saw it done, I didn't realize my camera was lopsided!)



After the tour of the cellar, we were taken to the vinyards to see the baby grapes: they won't be ready to be harvested until August. But the views where great! Lori said it was the first time she was taken to the vinyards when visiting a cellar!

And back to the cellar, we had a wonderful wine tasting. The Ellis had asked for a real tasting, not the average tourist one, so we got to try 3 different cavas, plus the bottle that had been degorged in front of us (it's amazing how agressive the bubbles are at that moment: it's truelly dramatic for the wine! it seems it needs a few days to reach its perfect point), and 3 wines (2 that were included in the tasting, plus a special Ice Wine for dessert that was the cellar's gift.

I'm not used to drinking much, so I was starting to (as the Ellis said) "riding the snake". But we headed soon for lunch at a great local restaurant where we were the only foreigners and had a beautiful meal before going to Montserrat.

After such an intense morning, there wasn't much time left to wander in the Monastery, but we still made it to ride the cablecar up, visit the Virgin shrine, lit up a candle for her and enjoy the place with almost no tourists around (most tour groups leave the mountain after the Choir sings, and at that time we were enjoying our wine so we missed both Choir and crowds, which was fine for the Ellis).

We decided next time they come (to see the progress of the Sagrada Familia church), we'll visit some other cellar, then drop them in Montserrat for the night (as they enjoy places when they get empty) and the next they I'll pick them up for some other tour out-of-the-beaten-track. Maybe the Cardona salt mines, who knows?

Special Harvest tour in the Penedès!

Great news!

One of my favorite wineries in the Penedès area offers a special Harvest tour ONLY IN SEPTEMBER!

Hire it with Foreverbarcelona.com in a Half Day tour or as a Full Day trip combining it with a visit to the Montserrat Mountain and Monastery!

WEEK DAYS
Half day tour / 5h: 425€ (guide + private minivan with driver) + 8€/person for the Harvest activity including wine tasting.
Full day tour / 8h: 650€ (guide + private minivan with driver) + 8€/person for the Harvest activity including wine tasting. Lunch not included.

WEEKENDS AND BANK HOLIDAYS
Half day tour / 5h: 480€(guide + private minivan with driver) + 8€/person for the Harvest activity including wine tasting.
Full day tour / 8h: 765€(guide + private minivan with driver) + 8€/person for the Harvest activity including wine tasting. Lunch not included.

Foody tours with http://wishyouwereheretours.com !

Wine tasting at Gramona Cellar / At Cal Pep, Jose and Jordan offered us their best Tapas

Lori, one of the owners of http://wishyouwereheretours.com/ was in Barcelona this week with Ed and Linda, her clients. They spent a whole week enjoying the tastes and flavours of Barcelona, and of course I was there to show them the best foody spots!

Amongst other activities, we had a yummy tapas tour, we visited 2 cellars in the Penedès county, and strolled around the Old Town discovering great Gourmet stores (the savory products tour included a cheese tasting, and the sweet products tour started with super-rich thick hot chocolate with churros!).



In the Gramona cellar, we were lucky to visit the Gramona cava cellar on the week when skilled workers degorge more than 200.000 bottles manually.

A great day at the wine country!

The staff from Complete Campbell Catering (www.tripleccatering.com) was in Spain to get in touch with the local cooking and asked me to take them to the Penedès Wine Country to discover our wineries.
It was a great day: we visited Albet i Noya, an organic winery, and Gramona, known for their elegant hand-made cavas (sparkling wine). The tours at each cellar included a visit of their venue, a walk in the vineyards and tasting some wonderful wines.
See my photo album about the wineries here:

Penedès Wine Country

Training tours and workshops

The low tourist season is the right time to train and keep learning new things to share with our future clients and to expand and improve our tours offer.

So in December I have attended the following training events:

- Workshop on Medieval cities. Two days of interesting conferences about urbanism and dayly life in the Middle ages.
- Modernist Canet. We visited the home town of Domènech i Muntaner, one of the most renowned architects of our Modernism and learnt about his life and works there.
- Picasso & Wine in the Maresme County. We discovered an impressive private collection of Picasso paintings, and afterwards visited a local winery where we had some wine tasting.
- Olympic Museum. We had an introduction to this recently open venue that explains the history of the Olympic Games and links it to the history and evolution of Sport.
- AGBAR tower. The local tourguides association was invited to visit this office building (usually never open to the public) so we are ready to answer any questions about this eye-catching building.

Check out this photo album about the visit to the AGBAR Tower!