About
In many Spanish cities, a bodega is a corner store or bar with – if you’re lucky – a wine cellar and a small kitchen serving riffs on traditional Spanish foods. Barcelona’s bodegas are all of these things and more: the beating heart of their respective barrio, or neighborhood. There, wine barrels, chalk marked with their content’s region of origin, line the walls. Neighbors come in and fill a jug to take it home, pausing for a game of cards, a drink and a bite to eat and some banter. On this tour, as we travel along Barcelona’s urban wine route, we’ll be among those regulars, eating and drinking our way through some of the city’s most iconic bodegas, wine shops and neighborhood restaurants. On our Bodega tour in Barcelona, we will start by dropping in the historic and multicultural El Raval district, first for a carajillo, coffee spiked with Catalan brandy, at an unforgettable neighborhood haunt. From there we’ll make our way to the more upscale bodegas of the San Antoni and Poble Sec neighborhoods, where tradition is tweaked with a modern touch. Along with sips of hard-to-find wines from all over Spain we’ll also sample some fine Catalan wines and, among other delights, we’ll taste artisanal regional cheeses, modern pintxos (Basque-style tapas), top grade anchovies and octopus fritters paired with a dry house cava. During the traditional afternoon “vermouth hour,” we will have our vermut done right, which means served chilled with only an olive as garnish, an old-time soda siphon bottle ready for the occasional spritz and, of course, a few perfectly paired tapas on the side. There is plenty of food to call this tour a long, well-lubricated lunch and enough drinks to consider it an extended happy hour. Better yet, we like to call it an invitation into the unique culture of the Barcelona bodega and the barrios that keep this tradition alive.
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