As a special experience this trip, we decided to venture out of the city to the region of Penedès – the heart of cava country. If you’ve never experienced Spanish cava – the Spanish version of sparkling wine – then you are missing out. Of the three types of sparkling wine, French champagne is the best known, followed by Italian prosecco, and least known is Spanish cava. In my (not so) humble opinion, my preference runs in the opposite direction – cava first, prosecco second, and champagne last.
We took the train (R4) from Estacion Sants to the stop closest to the cava winery that we were touring. The main stops are either Villafranca de Penedes (the main town) or Sant Sadurni (the home of Freixenet and other larger wineries), however there are a lot of small wineries at the Lavern-Subirats station (in between Sant Sadurni and Villafranca).
We had booked a “Create your own cava” tour with a small winery called ArtCava. They picked us up at the train station and we spent an AMAZING few hours touring the winery, tasting (and tasting, and tasting, and tasting), before we disgorged our own bottles of cava, corked, caged, and labeled them!! It was an OUTSTANDING experience that I would recommend to anyone – especially in you like bubbles.
Our guide for this experience was a very knowledgeable intern at the winery, Gerard. His English was very good, his knowledge was excellent, and he had a great sense of humor! We couldn’t have asked for a better guide for this adventure.
And it wouldn’t be fun without a couple of TERRIBLE videos…
I can’t express how much fun we had at ArtCava! I had hoped that Madame would be with us, but, alas, life interferes. I had also harbored delusions that I’d be able to somehow get OUR bottles of cava back to Mexico in one piece – but I don’t see any way to gently transport bubbles on commercial air travel.
Remember this??
So, instead, OUR bottles of cava will be enjoyed in Spain – and only the memories will travel home with us.