Private Insider Wine & Gastronomy Experiences
Hosted by Chef Marcus & Jamie Guiliano
January 9–15, 2027
Private custom travel also available for groups, families, and culinary clubs.
Travel through Oaxaca with the people who have spent years building friendships across the city, the valleys, and the mountain palenques of mezcal country. This is Oaxaca through the eyes of the families who make it, not a guidebook.
Date
Destination
Experience
Oaxaca does not reveal itself all at once. It slowly pulls you in as the smell of roasting agave drifts through the mountains, church bells echo on cobblestone streets, and smoke rises from market grills while grandmothers press tortillas by hand and mezcaleros work beside fermentation tanks and clay stills. For Marcus and Jamie, Oaxaca represents everything travel should be: real people, real food, real culture, with no manufactured experiences, no staged tourism, and no giant buses, only relationships. Guests do not simply taste mezcal. They experience the people and the lives behind it.
Hosted Departure
January 9–15, 2027 · 7 days, 6 nights, with Marcus and Jamie traveling alongside the group from arrival to farewell.
Small group experience
Only 6–14 guests are invited into this hosted Oaxaca experience. The size is intentional. It protects the intimacy, the access, and the seat at the family table that define VIP Winery Vacations.
Prefer private travel?
Many guests choose to travel privately with couples, friends, families, restaurant teams, collectors, bartenders, travel-advisor clients, and private groups of 2–12. Ask about custom FIT (Free Independent Travel) programs designed around your dates, your pace, and the producers and experiences that matter most to you.
Schedule a discovery call with Marcus and Jamie to discuss availability.
ust relationships built over years in food and travel, and the friendships that make every door in Oaxaca open a little wider. You sit with mezcaleros and their families, not behind a rope. You eat at family tables before you eat at restaurants. You stay in properties chosen for character and location, not chain reliability. You travel with a chef and a host who have walked these mountain roads for years.
Oaxaca does not give itself up in a single afternoon. It reveals itself in the second copita of tobalá, in the long market lunch that turns into an aimless walk, in the mezcalero who insists you stay for one more taste straight from the still, in the drive back down the mountain with the windows open and woodsmoke in the air. The pace of this trip is the point. Seven days is the minimum to do Oaxaca the way the families here do it: slowly, generously, and without a clock.
Seven-day immersive itinerary
Each day is built around the rhythm of place: the markets and mezcalerias of Oaxaca City, the family palenques of the valleys and the Sierra Norte, the Zapotec ruins and frozen stone of Hierve el Agua, and the long shared meals that define Oaxacan hospitality.
Arrive in Oaxaca and settle into Hotel Casa Vértiz. Spend the evening wandering cobblestone streets filled with music, mezcal bars, church bells, and the aromas drifting from restaurants and markets. The city introduces itself slowly. A welcome dinner with Marcus and Jamie sets the tone, because the first night is always about meeting the people you’ll spend the week with.
Start at the famous Tlacolula Market, then travel deep into the Sierra Norte mountains. Visit Mezcal Tosba for palenque tours, tastings, and meals shared with the producers. Continue toward Hierve el Agua for an unforgettable overnight.
Morning hike at Hierve el Agua. Visit Isaac Mezcal and Macurichos. Explore Mitla and Oaxaca’s famous weaving traditions. Return to Oaxaca City for the night.
Visit Monte Albán. Explore artisan pottery workshops and pick up custom mezcal cups. Walk the Oaxaca markets and dive into the city’s mezcal culture. Dinner at Les Desantes.
Visit Victor Ramos, Felipe Cortez, and Gregorio Hernández across one of Oaxaca’s most important mezcal regions. Three producers, three philosophies, one valley.
Breakfast at Caterina. Visit Eduardo “Lalocura” Ángeles, Antonio Carlos Martínez, and Rosario at Rahmba, the ancestral heart of clay-pot mezcal. Return to Oaxaca.
A final morning in the mezcal world. Tour Rompe Corazón for traditional roasting pits, tahona crushing, and guided tastings paired with Oaxacan food, then a farewell lunch at San Diego Market before afternoon departures. Guests leave with mezcal in their bags and Oaxaca in their hearts.
Mezcals & Agaves to Expect
This journey you will taste widely planted espadín alongside wild expressions like tobalá and tepeztate, plus karwinskii agaves such as madrecuixe, and slow-growing arroqueño and mexicano, with additional pours like bicuixe, tobaziche, and cuishe, while seeing the full process firsthand from wild-agave harvests and natural fermentation to clay-pot (ancestral) and copper-still (artisanal) distillation in small-batch family palenques.
Oaxaca International Airport (OAX), in Oaxaca City.
Only 6–14 guests are invited into the hosted Oaxaca departure because the size is intentional—it is what makes the family table, the backyard palenque, and the unhurried market lunch possible. These experiences simply cannot be recreated at a larger scale. If Oaxaca is the trip you’ve been waiting for, the next step is a conversation, not a checkout page. Schedule a consultation with Marcus and Jamie Guiliano at VIP Winery Vacations · (845) 800-0449, because the best parts of Oaxaca aren’t found online. They’re found around someone’s family table.
Your details are used only to follow up about the Oaxaca hosted journey or private travel request.
