Cider, sake and mezcal tours on the food trail

About this category

Drinks with a home address

Some drinks only make sense where they are made. Basque cider is sharp and still and meant for a cider house dinner, sake follows the water of the town that brews it, and mezcal tastes of the earth oven its agave roasted in. Most tours in this category include a cider house, brewery, distillery or palenque, and the rest pour the local drinks with the food around them.

Europe’s entry is the Basque Country. The six-day tour has dinner at a cider house in Astigarraga, with a walk through the orchard and barrel room and, from February to April, txotx, when the cidermaker opens a tap on a huge barrel and you catch the stream in your glass. Getaria adds a txakoli winery above the sea, and the three-hour San Sebastián Pintxos Walk pours txakoli from a height, natural cider and a Rioja Alavesa red. In Spain these are for guests 18 and over.

Japan: Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka has a sake tasting with a certified sommelier in Tokyo and a family brewery in Fushimi, where brewers draw soft water from deep wells, plus highballs in a Shinjuku izakaya, all for guests 20 and over. Mexico City and Oaxaca tastes pulque at a pulquería in Centro and ends at a palenque in Santiago Matatlán, where agave roasts in an earth oven and a horse turns the stone tahona, with mezcal for guests 18 and over.

In the United States the drinking age is 21. The Great American Barbecue Trail visits a small whiskey distillery in the West Bottoms of Kansas City and an Austin craft brewery, and the Texas Barbecue Trail has the same brewery afternoon plus Hill Country wineries. New Orleans and Cajun Country pours drinks with two of its dinners, one of them at a Cajun dance hall.

Pours are tasting size, ID is checked where the law asks for it, and every stop has a good non-alcoholic choice, from grape juice and tejate to matcha. Our vans and trains do the traveling, so nobody drives after a tasting.