My boyfriend and I are just in the planning stages of a trip to Spain...specifically to visit the wine regions. Has anyone done a trip like this, and if so, please share your experiences and tell us where you went, what kinds of wines you sampled, etc. We also love to cook and eat great food (does not have to be Michelin rated). Any culinary suggestions (restaurants, cookware stores, bakeries, food markets) would also be greatly appreciated. We haven't booked out trip yet, but plan to spend about one week to ten days in Spain sometime in July or August.

Daphne- <BR>We like to travel to wine regions and are heading to Spain shortly. We decided on the Priorat(o)region since a lot of great stuff is coming out of there. There are several other wine "regions" around Catalonia (Penedes, etc). We currently are scheduled to visit some of the cava houses as well as wineries around the Gratallops area. We're also heading up the Costa Brava and briefly crossing into France to taste some Banyuls. Try this website, it helped a lot. www.jrnet.com

Lori, thank you so much for your reply to my post! The website is indeed very helpful and I've bookmarked it for future reference. Enjoy your trip to Spain and please post a trip report when you return! I'd love to hear all about it.<BR><BR>PS - I noticed the website also has a section on olive oil...another thing we're interested in sampling and possibly bring home.

The Traveller's Wine Guide series has a guide to Spain that I believe you would find very helpful. Available in most bookstores. Got mine at Barnes and Noble. We used it extensively in planning our trip to Spain.

In my opinion, the most famous areas are Rioja (try a search with this name "rioja")and Rueda (in Castilla y Leon). Cava is our champagne, produced with the same method, but Spanish instead of French.

Thanks to everyone for your responses. I am going to be quite busy in the next few days reading and trying to decide on an itinerary. That's why I find this board so informative...there's always someone out there that has first hand experience, or has a website or other source to recommend. <BR><BR>For Carmen - Thanks for telling me about the rioja region...we have tasted the wines here (the ones that are available in the US) and really loved them. This will definitely be part of our itinerary! We like to bring back wines that aren't readily available here. When we travelled to France last month we ventured to Dijon and Beaune and just stopped in to the various wineries we found along the way. A great experience and even greater wine! We are hoping to find the same in Spain.