Much to the chagrin of my coworkers, I’m taking a little jaunt through Europe with my childhood friend, Ezra for the next few weeks. In order to gain a little bit of street cred with the boss, I’ll hit up a few wineries along the way. For posterity’s sake, the following is an outline of my itinerary.

I leave tomorrow and for the first week or so, we’re cruising through the Eastern Block of Europe… Checking out Budapest and Prague, visiting Ezra’s previous home in Germany… we’ll do some snowboarding, and just take in the sights. After that, as you can see below, the itinerary gets a little less loose:

January 4th-6th: Priorat, Spain
I’m still working on making some connections here… I’m hoping to get in touch with Eric Solomon and find some spots to hit through him.

January 7th-9th: Champagne, France
Local Paso Robles winemaker and French ex-pat Roger Nicolas from RN Estate was kind enough to get me in touch with his niece in Paris whose boyfriend works for a Champagne house in Ludes, so we’ll be visiting and tasting with them.

January 9th-13th: Kerry, Ireland
A slight detour here to celebrate a friend’s birthday.

January 13th-16th: Rhone region, France
I’m fully focused on making connections via Hospice du Rhone while I’m here. For sure I’ll be visiting Domaine de la Charbonniere and Domaine Faury… but the rest is up in the air. We’ll see where the wine… er… I mean wind… takes us.

January 16th-18th: Madrid, Spain

January 18th-20th: Rome, Italy

January 21st: Home!
… And back to work on the 22nd. The restaurant will be closed for our annual winter break, but I’m pretty sure there’ll still be tons of work for me when I get back.

I’m planning on taking a journal to document some of the trip… And maybe if I can find a computer here and there I can give a few updates here as well.