7 Best Places for Food and Wine in Spain

Combarro sits on the Ría de Pontevedra, an Atlantic estuary that has shaped the village's identity for generations through fishing and shellfish harvesting. Its old quarter brings together three elements rarely found together anywhere else in Galicia: waterfront fishermen's houses, stone hórreos, and granite cruceiros. If you want to taste a place rather than simply visit it, Combarro offers that connection within a few compact streets.

Many of the hórreos still standing today date to the 18th and 19th centuries. These raised granaries were built to protect stored grain from moisture and rodents, and their placement directly beside the water gives the village one of its most recognizable and photographed features. Combarro belongs to the municipality of Poio in Pontevedra province, a detail that makes it an easy extension for travelers already exploring the wider Rías Baixas region.

What to Expect

Albariño is the defining white grape of nearby Rías Baixas, prized for a crisp acidity and citrus character built for Atlantic seafood. Octopus arrives here the traditional Galician way, a feira, dressed simply in olive oil, paprika, and coarse salt. Mussels, scallops, clams, cockles, and zamburiñas come from the estuary itself, often finished on the grill or plancha with little more than lemon, the boats still knocking against the dock as the catch comes in. Galician cooking trusts the ingredient first, keeping preparations light enough that the raw material does the work.

Where to Enjoy Your Visit

• Pair pulpo a feira with a chilled glass of Albariño at a waterfront table, the estuary itself setting the scene
• Join a boat excursion through the bateas, the shellfish-farm rafts, followed by a tasting of steamed mussels
• Order a shellfish lunch of grilled zamburiñas, clams, and mussels, then compare how lemon, olive oil, and Albariño each change the bite
• Walk an evening tapas route through the old quarter, stopping for octopus, razor clams, and Galician empanada
• Visit a winery in the Rías Baixas hinterland before returning to Combarro for a seafood dinner beside the hórreos

Your guide can arrange a private tasting itinerary through Combarro and the surrounding Rías Baixas coast, timed to the freshest catch of the season. For more details, see our 6 Best Wine Regions in Spain.

Alicante gives a traveler two experiences in one afternoon: a Mediterranean beach walk followed by a climb into a historic core crowned by Santa Bárbara Castle. As the capital of Alicante province on the Costa Blanca, the city draws on the Mediterranean, the region's market gardens, and its inland vineyards all at once, and that range shows up directly on the plate.

Alicante's wine story reaches beyond fresh coastal whites into something rarer: long-lived, oxidative styles shaped by the province's historic trade routes and warm climate. Fondillón, made from overripe Monastrell grapes and aged in barrel for a minimum of 10 years, stands as the region's signature expression of that history. The city's Central Market has served as an introduction to these ingredients for generations and it is still one of the clearest windows into how the province eats.

What to Expect

Paella alicantina takes its own path here, distinct from the more familiar Valencia paella styles, built from local rice traditions that can vary from one cook to the next. Salted fish runs through the local pantry as a source of concentrated flavor, showing up in salads, rice dishes, and tapas alike. Esmorzaret alacantí, the region's substantial mid-morning meal, centers on a filled baguette or sandwich alongside tapas, coffee, and sometimes a small beer or wine, a ritual built for lingering rather than rushing through.

Where to Enjoy Your Visit

• Take a guided tasting walk through Mercado Central de Alicante, focusing on salted tuna, mojama, regional cheeses, and seafood
• Order esmorzaret alacantí at a neighborhood bar to experience the mid-morning ritual as locals do
• Compare a seafood rice and a meat-and-vegetable rice at a specialist arrocería
• Visit an inland winery for Monastrell tastings, then reserve a separate pour of rare Fondillón for after dinner
• Taste salted fish in several forms, from shaved mojama over a salad to a salted cod croquette

Ask your guide to build a day around Alicante's Central Market and a Fondillón tasting, so the province's history and its pantry arrive on the same afternoon. For more inspiration, take a look at our Barcelona, Valencia, and Madrid vacations and tours.

Jerez de la Frontera anchors the Marco de Jerez, the wine area behind the Jerez-Xérès-Sherry Denomination of Origin. The city carries an outsized cultural personality for its size, tying sherry, flamenco, and Andalusian horses into one place. Jerez holds the title of Spain's Gastronomy Capital for 2026, which places its kitchens and bodegas under a particularly bright spotlight.

The chalky albariza soils around Jerez have shaped sherry production for centuries, giving the wine its particular mineral backbone. The city's position near the Atlantic coast of Cádiz supplies its cooks with seafood, while its inland setting brings in meats, produce, and the broader culinary language of Andalusia. Riñones al Jerez, kidneys enriched with local sherry, shows how directly the wine moves from glass to skillet.

What to Expect

Sherry spans a wide range in Jerez, from dry Fino and Oloroso to naturally sweet styles made from Pedro Ximénez and Moscatel grapes left to raisin in the sun. Rabo de toro, a slow-cooked oxtail dish finished in a deep, gelatinous sauce, remains one of the region's defining comfort dishes. Bluefin tuna from the Cádiz coast carries particular weight here, caught using almadraba, a traditional maze-like trap method tied to the tuna's seasonal migration.

Where to Enjoy Your Visit

• Book a bodega visit centered on the solera and criadera aging system, tasting Fino, Amontillado, Oloroso, and Pedro Ximénez side by side
• Build a sherry and tapas pairing flight, from Fino with fried fish to Pedro Ximénez with blue cheese
• Follow a sherry bar route through the city, choosing a new style and a new regional bite at each stop
• Seek out Cádiz bluefin tuna in several preparations, from tartare to cured mojama
• Arrange a cooking lesson built around sherry in the kitchen, such as riñones al Jerez or a sherry reduction sauce

A private solera tasting is easy to arrange through your guide and skips the wait most visitors face at the door. It can be built into any of our sample tours and vacations of Southern Spain

Ronda sits above El Tajo gorge, a deep cleft that splits the historic town from its newer districts and gives the destination one of Andalusia's most memorable settings. That elevation also shapes the wine below it, producing a cooler, more continental growing environment than much of coastal Málaga province.

Wine has grown in the Serranía de Ronda for millennia, with Phoenician and Roman cultivation forming part of the region's long relationship with the vine. Today's Serranía de Ronda, part of the DO Sierras de Málaga and commonly known simply as the Ronda wine region, has built a contemporary boutique-winery identity directly on top of that ancient foundation.

What to Expect

Ronda's producers work with a wide range of grapes, from Petit Verdot, Tempranillo, and cabernet sauvignon to Macabeo and Colombard whites suited to the region's lighter seafood dishes. Traditional Ronda cooking draws from a mountainous Andalusian pantry of olive oil, garlic, vegetables, cheese, pork, and game, often finished as a slow-cooked stew. Local wine guidance pairs the whites with seafood and fried fish, while the reds find their match in meats, pork, and cheese.

Where to Enjoy Your Visit

• Visit a Serranía de Ronda bodega for a vineyard walk, comparing a high-altitude white with a structured Petit Verdot or Tempranillo red
• Pair a chilled Macabeo or Colombard with salted or fried fish, then move to a red alongside local cheese or grilled lamb
• Explore the Serranía de Ronda Comprehensive Wine Centre, built inside historic 19th-century underground water tanks
• Reserve a long lunch built around cocina de cuchara, the region's spoonable stews and braises
• Watch the sunset over the gorge with a Ronda sparkling or rosé before an old-town dinner

Ask your guide to pair a Ronda bodega tour with a sunset table over El Tajo gorge, so the wine and the view arrive together. For more information, take a look at Zicasso’s Best Time to Visit Spain for a Wine Tour.

Acinipo sits about 11 miles from Ronda on a limestone plateau roughly 3,280 feet above sea level. The site traces its roots to the first millennium BCE, with early hut villages and craft activity giving way to Roman development from the 1st through 4th centuries CE. Its Roman theater remains the most striking structure on the site, creating a powerful sense of scale against the open rural landscape around it.

Archaeologists have uncovered coins at Acinipo marked with grape bunches, a detail that shows how central wine was to the settlement's economy and identity. Wine reportedly traveled from Acinipo to both Málaga and Rome, carried by a trade network built centuries before modern shipping routes existed.

What to Expect

Acinipo's elevation places it inside the wider Serranía de Ronda wine landscape, where altitude and limestone soils continue to shape the region's bottles today. Moscatel, one of Málaga's most recognizable grapes, produces both aromatic dry wines and luscious sweet wines from sun-dried fruit. Romé, a rare Andalusian grape tied specifically to the Málaga-Ronda area, offers a counterpoint most travelers will not have tasted before, while a small-producer Lemberger, also known as Blaufränkisch, points to the experimental character running through parts of this wine scene.

Where to Enjoy Your Visit

• Begin with a morning guided visit to Acinipo, then continue to a nearby winery for a tasting linked directly to the site's Roman vine history
• Taste Moscatel in two forms, one dry and aromatic, one sweet and concentrated, to see how differently the same grape can pour
• Ask a winery to pour an indigenous-versus-international comparison, such as Romé alongside Syrah or Tempranillo
• Pair a late-harvest Moscatel with Andalusian almond pastries or blue cheese
• Arrange a picnic of regional cheeses and cured meats after visiting the ruins, enjoyed at a permitted scenic location or back at a nearby bodega

Let your guide pair a private visit to Acinipo's Roman theater with a Serranía de Ronda tasting built around the grapes grown on the same ground centuries ago.

San Sebastián, known by its Basque name Donostia, sits on the Bay of Biscay framed by the curve of La Concha Bay. The city's food culture runs on several tracks at once: neighborhood pintxos bars, serious seafood cookery, cider house traditions, and one of the highest concentrations of acclaimed restaurants anywhere in Spain.

Pintxos share roots with tapas but carry a distinctly Basque identity of their own, historically served on bread and fastened with a toothpick before local chefs began pushing the form toward something closer to miniature haute cuisine. Parte Vieja, the Old Town, remains the classic setting for this style of eating, its compact bars lining their counters with hot and cold bites meant to be grazed across several stops.

What to Expect

Txakoli, the lightly sparkling and sharply acidic Basque wine, pairs naturally with the coast's seafood and pintxos, often poured from height in a small ritual that aerates the wine before it reaches the glass. A zurito, a small pour of beer, lets a traveler sample bar after bar without overcommitting at any single stop, the clatter of small plates and conversation carrying from one counter to the next. Anchovies appear everywhere here, fresh, marinated as boquerones, or salt-cured, each preparation changing the fish's texture and intensity in a different direction.

Where to Enjoy Your Visit

• Do a structured pintxos crawl through Parte Vieja, alternating hot and cold bites with txakoli, cider, or a zurito
• Ask for txakoli poured from height at a traditional bar
• Try anchovies in a tasting progression, from fresh grilled fish to vinegar-marinated boquerones to salt-cured conservas
• Reserve one meal at a Michelin-starred or chef-led restaurant, then contrast it with a relaxed pintxos evening the following night
• Visit a traditional cider house outside the city during cider season for cod omelet, cod with peppers, grilled txuleta steak, and Idiazábal cheese with quince paste

For a two-part San Sebastián evening, a pintxos crawl through Parte Vieja followed by a chef-led table across town, your guide handles the reservations so the evening runs on its own schedule. For more inspiration on visiting the region, see our Northern Spain tours and vacations.

Pontevedra sits at the head of the Ría de Pontevedra, a Galician city whose maritime identity runs through its food, its promenades, and its relationship with the estuary at its doorstep. Its pedestrian-friendly historic center, with granite lanes and merchant-era architecture, makes for a walkable base for exploring the wider Rías Baixas region.

The province surrounding Pontevedra sits at the center of Galicia's shellfish country, where aquaculture and small-scale harvesting have shaped the local economy and culture for generations. Arcade, close by, has long stood as the region's oyster stronghold, while the Vigo estuary continues to supply much of the province's cultivated oyster harvest today.

What to Expect

Cockles have grown increasingly abundant along the Rías Baixas coast and now rank among the region's most characteristic shellfish. Mussels, oysters, scallops, and clams thrive in the sheltered estuarine waters here, most often served simply, steamed or grilled, so the briny character of the Atlantic comes through directly. Albariño-based whites, with their brightness and acidity, provide the natural match for nearly all of it.

Where to Enjoy Your Visit

• Take a mussel-farm cruise on the Ría de Arousa or Rías Baixas, then taste steamed mussels with a traditional regional white
• Plan an oyster excursion to Arcade, tasting freshly opened oysters with lemon and a crisp Albariño
• Order a shellfish mariscada, a mixed platter that might include mussels, cockles, clams, crab, scallops, and langoustines
• Pair cockles with a citrus-driven Albariño, then try the same wine alongside richer mussels or scallops
• Combine an old-town walking tour with a market lunch of octopus, empanada, or grilled shellfish

A Rías Baixas itinerary anchored in Pontevedra, pairing an Arcade oyster excursion with a private mariscada dinner in the old town, is one your guide can put together end to end. For more details, take a look at Zicasso’s Top Food and Wine Experiences in Spain.

These destinations show how differently one country can express the same idea: that food and wine carry a region's history forward, one glass and one plate at a time. A traveler moving through Galicia's shellfish coast, Andalusia's sherry country, and the Basque pintxos bars of San Sebastián comes away with a far fuller picture of Spain than any single stop could offer alone.

Craft your bespoke journey through Spain's food and wine regions with a guide who can turn these seven destinations into a single, personally shaped itinerary. For more inspiration and information, see our Europe food and wine tours and vacations and the Spain travel guide.