Plentiful Fresh Food & Drink...

Food is very important to the Spanish, and because fresh produce is readily available it is easy to achieve fine, rich flavours. Garlic and olives are favourite ingredients. Flavoured cheeses, cured hams, and sausages are a Spanish speciality.

• Spanish Specialities

Spain's most famous meal is paella, and it has many variations. Seafood, snails, rabbit, or poultry can be chosen as the base ingredient for this dish, and this is then fried in a big pan with onions, peppers, and olive oil and served with saffron rice and lots of finely chopped herbs and vegetables.

• Spanish Tapas

Tapas was invented as a means to make your drink last longer. As dinner is eaten late in Spain, tapas makes a useful snack and is still regarded as informal, street-style food, although it is also served in high-class restaurants.

Tapas can range from traditional hams or mussels on cocktail sticks to stuffed anchovy olives or octopus. You will find an amazing variety of tapas dishes, but what makes it a real delight is the dips and sauces that accompany each mouthful. Toast rubbed with garlic, topped with tuna and roasted peppers and dripping with olive oil is just one example.

• Spanish Wine

Spain is also one of the largest wine producers in the world, and three million tonnes of grapes are bottled each year. Rioja wine is the most famous of all its varieties, coming from the northern Rioja region.

Quality Rioja wines have a common feature: they are aged in oak casks for several years before they are bottled. The oak has small pores and lets in less air so that the wine develops slowly and more smoothly and acquires the flavours it is famous for.