Where do you buy great cheeses from Europe to Colorado, undiscovered wines from around the world or chocolates that would make you propose to the chef?We have the answer, or answers as it would be, and the first tour participants on our Gourmet Culinary Tour enjoyed all the purveyors had to offer. On our tours you spend four hours tasting, learning and laughing your way through seven gourmet shops and one restaurant.
We started our tour at Highlands funky tea (and bike) shop, Urbanistic Tea & Bike, where Michelle and her brother Ethan sell some amazing teas (and fix bikes - it works, trust me), we tasted a lovely Earl Grey that showed a beautiful floral aroma - a perfect afternoon tea. Chef Cristino (that's him leaning over the display case) talked about how he uses tea to steep vegetables and that it is important to taste the tea - as in eating the leaves so you know the ingredients you are cooking.
We all loaded into a huge SUV and went to our next stop at Savory Spice Shop where Kate, that's her in the picture handing out spices, treated us to aromatic mulled cider made with the mulling spices they create in their store (do yourself a huge wintertime favor and go buy some, take it home, and make it, it's amazing). We then had a short class on spices, including tasting real cinnamon, not cassias, but real cinnamon - in a word - wonderful. All I could think of was making coffee cake with a strudel topping and drinking the mulled cider. We all enjoyed tasting new spices, learning about how they grind all their own spices and knowing each one of us would be back.
We visited six more stores, so, come back and learn more about a wonderful chocolatier and an amazing little wine store and the owners that run them - they are as amazing as the stores themselves.
I will leave you with this, the tour was wonderful for so many flavorful reasons. The best was the connection made between the people on the tour and the purveyors of the store. Food is so much more than providing fuel for our bodies, it fuels our relationships.
Ciao!
Becky
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