Albania’s food and drink culture is one of Europe’s most significant undiscovered treasures. The country has been producing wine since the Illyrian period — over 2,500 years — using native grape varieties found nowhere else on earth. Its olive trees in the Vlorë region are some of the oldest in the Mediterranean, predating the Roman Empire. Its raki tradition, particularly in the Permet valley where rose-petal raki is produced, is unique on the continent. And its cuisine — a confluence of Ottoman, Greek, Venetian and indigenous Albanian influences — is among the most original and satisfying in the Balkans.
Inside Balkan’s Albania Wine & Gastronomy Tour was designed to put food and drink at the centre of an Albanian journey rather than treating them as incidental pleasures. Every day on this tour is organised around a culinary experience: a winery visit, a distillery tour, a market morning, a cooking demonstration, a fisherman’s beach dinner. The scenery is magnificent. The history is present everywhere. But the primary lens through which you experience Albania on this tour is taste.
The route moves south from Tirana through the Berat wine region to the Permet raki valley and down to Gjirokastër — whose distinctive slow-cooking traditions produce some of the finest lamb dishes in the Balkans — before ending on the Albanian Riviera, where the afternoon catch is grilled on the beach while the sun sets over the Ionian Sea.
All meals are included on this tour. Inside Balkan believes that you cannot understand a country if you are eating international food in tourist restaurants. Every meal is chosen to be representative of where you are: local ingredients, traditional recipes, and the people who make them.
