Skip to main content
Open this photo in gallery:

Madrid moves at a brisk urban pace, a sharp contrast to Barcelona's more laid-back vibe.Tourismo Madrid

I count a dozen massive black bulls roadside as I spend a week touring Spain with food and wine insider Rocio Osborne.

With green eyes as magnetic as her irresistible laugh, the mother of two young children is an ambassador of the wine, sherry and ham company Osborne that’s parked iconic, bullish cutouts along Spanish highways for 60 years.

A former London investment banker who spent part of her childhood in Mexico, Osborne never thought she’d enter the family business. But her personal drive for authenticity (she spent a vacation week immersed in all aspects of the ham operation, including learning to inseminate pigs) makes her a passionate representative for the brand – and Spain itself.

With family ties to Madrid, sherry-producing Jerez in the southeast and both the Basque Country and Rioja wine region in the north, she’s the ultimate guide. As we dive into four regions of Spain, I get an expert-led taste of how the country’s food and wine are inseparable from its culture and history.

Here’s how to go beyond Barcelona like a pro.

Madrid

Open this photo in gallery:

Madrid's fashion-forward Salamanca is one of the city's appealing, walkable neighbourhoods.Spanish Tourist Office/Instituto de Turismo de España

Madrid is the largest city in Spain with a brisk urban pace that’s unlike Barcelona’s laid-back vibe. A prime-location hotel makes neighbourhoods such as fashion-forward Salamanca and literary-rich Barrio de las Letras walkable, and puts famous museums and landmarks from the Museo Reina Sofia (where Picasso’s massive Guernica canvas hangs) to the Real Jardin Botanico park at your doorstep. Rooftop bars are Madrid’s current hot spots, so time your presunset arrival to enjoy a bowl-wineglass G&T at Radio, the mist-cooled lounge atop the ME Madrid Reina Victoria on Plaza Santa Ana. The skyline glows during golden hour, before bars get busy in this night-owl city.

Stay

Petit Palace Lealtad Plaza Hotel is a hop from the central Paseo del Prado backbone, and also from the Ritz and Palace luxury stays. Compact, comfy rooms, located in a luxe little former palace with a high-design makeover, can go for less than €100 ($150). There’s a cozy living room off the lobby for quick refreshment and online recon on two hotel laptops, and a lavish breakfast in the basement every morning that includes an impressive organic section. Rooms from $138; petitpalace-lealtadmadrid.com

Eat

For the outdoor lunch feel without the ruthless sun, eat at Zahara, which has enough trailing plants, whitewashed boards and pergola skylights to feel like a terrace. Osborne supplies its meat here, an ideal place to learn about Iberico ham, the acorn-fed, dry-cured delicacy that sells for $50 or more for a 100 grams.

Rocio Osborne uses her fingers to demonstrate nabbing the exquisitely thin slices, nimbly wrapping them around picos, crunchy little breadsticks. She points out the striped layers of meat and fat as a hallmark of Iberico, available in several cuts with different marbling and flavours. Play roulette with small, roasted green padron peppers which, similar to shishitos, are randomly spicy in about a 1:10 ratio. Garlic lovers should order the thick, cold soup salmorejo of tomatoes and olive oil thickened with bread purée and, here, a touch of red pepper.

Do

Head for the funky, LGBTQ-friendly neighbourhood of Chueca packed with cool boutiques such as Do Design and Malababa, with three-storey Mercado de San Anton at its heart. Browse produce and takeout on your way up to the top, where the raucous La Cocina de San Anton will prepare market ingredients and serves international bites such as Thai-spiced prawns and Hawaiian-style tuna poke. Drink like a local by ordering vermouth, served tall over ice. “Vermoutherias are super-hipster,” Osborne says, describing how young drinkers are rediscovering obscure tipples, including funky sherries.

El Puerto de Santa Maria

Open this photo in gallery:

The sherry bodegas raise and lower shades to harness natural air conditioning from outside.osborne group/Instituto de Turismo de España

Forming one point of the sherry triangle (along with Jerez de la Frontera and Sanlucar de Barrameda), this cute seaside town can be desert hot when the eastern, Sahara-heated levante winds are blowing, then humid and cool when the Atlantic-born poinente breezes in. Osborne points out high windows in the thick stone-walled sherry bodegas, where shades raise and lower to harness natural air conditioning from both directions. Wooden beams, stones and massive wooden sherry casks are coated in a black shadow that’s key to maintaining the flor yeast that gives some sherries their characteristic, nutty and earthy flavours. We taste a 30-year-old palo cortado from the cask: smells like salted caramel, tastes as intriguingly lush and umami as dashi broth.

Stay

Five-star Hotel Duques de Medinaceli is an 18th-century Andalusian palace with 28 guestrooms, some with four-poster beds and spacious sitting areas. The gated grounds are a massive garden with a plunge-perfect pool and a shady terrace to enjoy the heaving buffet breakfast. Peek into the palace’s intact chapel, off to the right of the entrance atrium. Rooms from $148; hotelduquesdemedinaceli.com

Eat

Follow a tour of the 1772 Osborne sherry operation with the modern taste of Toro Tapas, adjacent to the bodega. The hip drink is a rebujito of sherry mixed with soda, an appetite-whetting accompaniment to tomato salad with juicy shrimp, fluffy-battered fried whitefish and a striking black squid-ink pasta topped with head-on langoustines.

Osborne grew up here, after moving from Mexico (where her Spanish parents had relocated for work) as a child, and intimately knows these waterfront streets of low, whitewashed aging warehouses. She recommends tapas with the locals at Bar El Beti, La Bodeguilla Bar Jamon or one of the palapa-roofed beach bars along the waterfront.

Or dine like royalty at the traditional Restaurant Los Portales, frequented by Spanish celebrities including the king, and order fresh fish (perhaps bream, bass or the shellfish that swim in the tank).

Do

The day-tripping passenger ferry to Cadiz, at less than 30 minutes and €3($4.50), is the ticket to one of the oldest ports in the world. The hilly town centre has a partly excavated Roman amphitheatre and the Callejon del Duende (“Goblin’s alley”), a portal of urban legends. Enjoy cafés, ice cream kiosks, people watching and citrus-dripping trees in shady squares. If you’re not up for a boat ride, stroll the waterside market stalls to score finds such as white cotton-eyelet dresses, straw bags and crafts.

Bilbao

Open this photo in gallery:

Frank Gehry's riverside Guggenheim still draws hordes of tourists to Bilbao.Luis A. Ripoll/Instituto de Turismo de España

Two decades ago, this city sparked the eponymous, much-imitated starchitecture effect by commissioning Canadian-born architect Frank Gehry to create a wavy, riverside museum that still draws tourist hordes. The often-overcast weather in this lush, green corner of northwest Spain reflects moodily off the Guggenheim’s titanium skin and keeps Jeff Koons’s blooming Puppy sculpture fresh.

Twenty years ago, the museum seemed like the only game in town; today it’s the jewel, but not the whole crown of well-heeled Bilbao. There are luxe hotels, a design district and a lime-green tram speeding travellers across to the old quarter Casco Viejo. “It has always been a wealthy city,” Osborne says of the shipping and industry centre. “Now, they’ve changed the look of it to show that.”

Open this photo in gallery:

Take a tram to Bilbao's medieval Casco Viejo, also known as Las Siete Calles (the Seven Streets).Felipe J. Alcoceba/Instituto de Turismo de España

Stay

Sleep at the Grand Hotel Domine, across from the Guggenheim, and have a sunset drink at the rooftop lounge, watching the light play on the museum’s titanium surface like a modern Taj Mahal. Rooms from $176.

Eat

Michelin star-seekers will want to reserve at Mina or Azurmendi, but Osborne has wrangled us an invite to the Sociedad Bilbaina, one of the “gastronomic societies” that’s a hallmark of northern Spain’s Basque region. This one, a stately 1839 private club featuring a wood-panelled library, blue-felted billiards tables and the oxblood-leathered Bar Ingles, is quietly populated with businessmen (women were allowed in just three years ago) inhaling a hearty homecooked lunch. The club keeps its gourmet edge with celebrity chef dinners (see sociedadbilbaina.com for upcoming events and tickets).

Do

On Villarias Street, lifestyle boutiques such as Arropame and Persuade have curated clothes and design objets. Grab a drink and some pintxos (basically mini tapas) at Kubrick Bar, a shrine to the American director.

Logrono

Open this photo in gallery:

Nearly a million hand-stacked bottles of wine are aging underground at the Montecillo vineyard.Jmes Sturcke/Osborne Group

This gem of Rioja’s Rutas del Vino (wine routes) is an immaculate, affluent wine-country hub for Rioja Alta, Alavesa and Baja. Roadside vineyards are lined with wild, leafy bush vines heaving with T-shaped clusters of purple Tempranillo. Many cellar tours launch from town, or choose a flight from hundreds of bottles at wine bars such as Wine Fandango – streets such as central Calle Laurel and Calle San Juan are lined with options. It’s an exciting time to taste Rioja wines, as once-leathery and heavily oaked reds and nutty, oxidized whites give way to fruitier, quaffable modern styles.

Stay

Hotel Calle Mayor is a 12-room design temple tucked inside a 16th-century palace. The minimalist, white interior is lined with ancient wooden beams and studded with artwork and design objects in bright red and turquoise. Giant Starck soaker tubs that fill with the touch of a button are an oasis after a day of wine touring. Rooms from $103; hotelcallemayor.com

Eat

Crisp white linens and dark wooden floors frame a glassed-in wall of more than 200 wines in the upstairs dining room of Taberna Herrerias. A hyper-local meal might start with asparagus, artichokes or tomato salad, and feature local specialties such as tiny, fire-grilled chuletas, baby lamb chops that are traditionally roasted over dried grapevines. There’s a more casual wine and tapas bar on the main floor of this chic restaurant.

Do

Gawk at nearly a million hand-stacked bottles aging underground at Osborne’s 1870-founded winery Montecillo. Spanish wines are essentially precellared for consumers, with Crianza, Reserve and Gran Reserva wines spending two, three or five total years aging in both barrel and bottle before they go to market.

The writer travelled as a guest of Osborne Group. It did not review or approve this article before publication.

Live your best. We have a daily Life & Arts newsletter, providing you with our latest stories on health, travel, food and culture. Sign up today.

Editor’s note: March 13, 2019: An earlier version of this article stated that Picasso’s Guernica hangs in the Prado. In fact, it hangs in the Museo Reina Sofia.

Interact with The Globe