Oaxaca with Stephen Jones

Bienvenidos a Mexico! We’ll meet up and get oriented with one of Latin America’s great colonial wonders: Oaxaca City. We’ll walk through the cobblestone streets and snack through its central markets, a feast of the senses where tasajo (dried meats) hang, open fires grill delicious tlayudas (toasted tortillas topped with Oaxacan string cheese and grilled meats), and vendors scurry past offering chapulines (roasted grasshoppers) and pastry-like pan de yema stacked in woven baskets. Delicious (even those grasshoppers, we promise).

Our next stop is a tasting celebration of local mezcals, with an expert mezcalero who will introduce us to the origins of artisanal mezcal, the cousin-spirit of tequila and one of Oaxaca’s famed exports. Dinner tonight is an inspired feast at Chef Alejandro Ruiz’s Casa Oaxaca, a World’s 50 Best selection, the perfect way to kick off our adventure together.

Today we head into the mountains, where villages devoted to arts and crafts lurk in valley shadows. We’ll stop at the Zapotec village of Teotitlan del Valle, a weaving village with about 5,000 people (and 2,000 looms). We’ll meet a local Zapotec weaving family, who’ll demonstrate their intricate craft using natural fibers for dyes (and even a grounded insect for the bright reds), just as they have for the past 14 generations. A home-cooked Zapotec lunch awaits us, with a chance for us to learn and to prepare local recipes.

Back in Oaxaca we’ll spend the afternoon in a hands-on, immersive mixology class. We’ll craft our own signature mezcal cocktails while learning the nuances of mezcal’s small-scale distilling traditions. After a cocktail, or two, of the artisanal mezcal on hand, we’ll have downtime at our hotel and then reconvene for dinner.

After a leisurely breakfast, we travel past row after row of agave plants in the mountain valleys, to meet up in the fields with a master mezcalero in Oaxaca’s traditional family-run palenques. We’ll learn how the piña (heart) of agave are harvested and smoked in underground pits, fermented in large vats, and distilled in copper or clay stills based on traditions that date back hundreds of years.

Oaxaca’s sense of art is vibrant, from ceramics and textiles to the highlight of our next stop: handcrafted and fantastical alebrije animal carvings, hand-painted with vivid color palettes. We’ll have a chance to meet the artisans, and then sit down for a traditional barbecue lunch. Afterwards we return to the city, where the late afternoon and evening are ours to explore Oaxaca’s world-class restaurants, or the taco stands set up along the lit-up zocalo, just a few blocks from our hotel.

We begin this epic day at the hilltop ruin of Monte Albán, a vast complex of pyramids, a palace, shrines dating from 500 BC—and easily one of Mesoamerica’s grandest sites. We explore its monumental scale and the intricate carvings of bas relief sculptures, with one of Mexico’s great colonial cities sprawling below us.

Next, we’ll stop in the home studio of one of Mexico’s most celebrated folk artists and ceramicists. While her family lovingly prepares lunch for us, we’ll have the opportunity to spend time with the artist as she shares her story and her art-filled private studio us. Then, the artist and her family will sit with us for a home-cooked meal—these are the authentic flavors of Oaxaca, and there’s nothing comparable. We end our day back in Oaxaca, with cocktails at a design-forward mezcal bar followed by a dinner that celebrates the ingredients and local dishes you can only find here, in Oaxaca, Mexico’s culinary heart and soul.

The morning is ours to rest and relax, and wander the streets and shops and Oaxaca at our leisure. In the afternoon we get the true Oaxacan farm-to-table experience at an urban farm on the edge of the city that supplies the top local restaurants with produce. We’ll break into small groups and cook alongside one of Mexico’s most celebrated chefs, making mole, tamales, Oaxacan cheese, and getting a deep and personal hands-on look into the local flavor profiles.

For dinner, we savor the al fresco feast and enjoy all the local delicacies we had a hand in preparing. We’ll toast with a full mezcal lineup from the family-run palenques we’ve visited, celebrating the traditions, heritage and true flavors of Oaxaca.

All great things come to an end, alas. After breakfast we’ll bid farewell to Oaxaca, and pack our things—hopefully including some of our favorite mezcal from our journey—for a short drive to Oaxaca’s airport for wherever your journey next takes you. Buen viaje!