A cloud of chalk marks my swift departure from the Pares Balta winery. Not because the wines aren’t good — they are — but because I’m on an electric bike, and I had the speed set too high. I had better watch that — and my wine consumption — if I’m going to survive the next few days here.
Where, exactly? I’m in Penedes in Spain’s Catalonia region, an hour’s drive west of Barcelona, in cava country. Bikes and bubbles? Hell, yeah.
Inntravel, the specialist walking and cycling tour operator, obviously thought it was a good combo too, and recently launched this four-night trip. It takes you along undulating, pine-scented , wildflower-edged country lanes that skirt the vineyards. Then it dives off into the vines themselves, along rough tracks that cut through to sleepy villages and onwards to your bed for the night in small hotels where good cooking and your luggage await. Main routes are kept to a minimum, and even when you do encounter traffic, drivers give you a wide berth: the Spanish respect the cyclist, it seems.
Some cava facts. The name cava is simply the Spanish term for traditional method sparkling wine, made like champagne but with different grapes (unlike prosecco, which is made using the stainless-steel Charmat method). The grapes are macabeo, parellada and xarel-lo (pronounced sha-rel-lo), and increasingly are chardonnay and pinot noir.
Cava used to be the go-to bubbly for those looking for something cheaper than champagne in the Eighties. Prosecco wears that crown now, but many producers here want a bigger piece of that pie and are improving their quality, from focusing on local varieties to giving the wines longer than the minimum bottle age.
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The reserva quality level was a great leap forward for cava, distinguishing the more complex cavas with an indication of vintage and quality (though they’re not significantly higher in price). The next step up was the recognition of gran reserva cavas, ambitious wines with higher price tags. Though, as we are still only talking on average about €15-€20 a bottle (from the cellar door), this really is great value quality bubbly.
It’s the only Spanish DO (denominacion de origen, similar to the French appellation d’origine contrôlée) not to have its own geographical home, and it’s produced in as many as 159 towns and villages across Spain, including La Rioja, Valencia and Extremadura.
However, most of the cava is made here in Catalonia, and specifically the Penedes region, with organic and even biodynamically grown grapes de rigueur, particularly among the smaller, boutique producers, where I’m mostly heading. I have already emailed to make appointments for a tasting and tour (your hotel is usually happy to oblige).
After Pares Balta, which is a family-owned winery, dating from 1790, where we tried some beautiful fizz made by two winemakers, I have lined up: a visit to a tiny husband-and-wife outfit at Can Descregut, who use organic grapes and who riddle (turn) all the bottles by hand; Recaredo, which rivals champagne with its serious cavas; and Juve y Camps, with its spectacularly sited tasting room and its delicious reserva (which we buy regularly in Waitrose for £11.49).
There are also plenty of large cava producers where you can just rock up, as we did at Codorniu, the second largest producer and the most architecturally impressive.
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Wherever you cycle here the magnificent jagged mauve teeth of the Montserrat mountain range frames your view. If we’d had more time we would have visited the Benedictine monastery there, but we had more pressing matters. A close encounter with an old Torres wine press, to be exact.
If you can name only one Spanish producer, it’s probably Torres, and its home is right here just outside the town of Vilafranca del Penedes, aka the wine capital of Penedes. We weren’t planning on dropping in — it doesn’t actually produce any cava, only a superior sparkling wine produced outside the DO — but after skirting its vineyards for what seems like miles our detailed route took us right past its front door and that old wine press.
It marks the entrance to the vast visitors’ centre, which receives 90,000 visitors annually. You can just stroll in for a quick taste — which we do, trying its multi-award-winning Mas La Plana Cabernet Sauvignon, which is credited by many for putting Penedes on the map.
It reminds us that it’s not all about cava here. Penedes produces a variety of wines, so to learn more about them we pushed on into Vilafranca for a look around the Vinseum, easily negotiating the well-heeled residential streets that lead us to the tangle of the old town.
Once a royal palace, it became the first wine museum in Spain in 1935, putting wine in the context of culture. The full self-guided audio tour takes three and a half hours, but you can just cherry-pick from its 500-strong objects on show (check out the 7th century BC grape seeds).
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After that, we’re more than ready for lunch so we hit El Cigro d’Or above the market on the recommendation of the Pares Balta winery owner, Joan Cusiné, and it doesn’t disappoint. A young Catalan chef named Oriol Llavina serves a beautifully executed three-course set lunch for a bargain €18 a head, which we accompany with a bottle of gran reserva cava from Marques de Gelida.
Praying that there’s enough juice left in our batteries, we make tracks to Can Descregut, 8km away, winding through vineyards and then climbing steeply (on full throttle) up through Vilobi del Penedes, where a couple of third-generation winemakers, Marc and Arantxa, produce stunning wines — and one of my top three cavas — all bottled by hand.
We buy a bottle of their 2009 Memoria Brut Nature to drink for dinner at our next hotel, Cal Ruget, where we stay for two nights, enjoying the nutty, appley notes of chardonnay blended with xarel-lo with our dinner of pork-stuffed squid and roasted rabbit with allioli, two Catalan classics expertly cooked by Nuria, the owner.
Catalan cuisine is varied and sophisticated, which is not surprising when you consider that the Catalans were originally called Francos by other Spaniards, so they are more than comfortable with fancy French ways.
A high point for us is the blend of seafood and produce from the rocky mountainous terrain, which they call mar i muntanya — such as Nuria’s pork-stuffed squid. But it’s also about dishes such as the plump, juicy clams (almejas) sucked out from their shells, which we enjoyed on our first night among the vines at the atmospheric Hotel Castell de Gimenelles, cooked by the charismatic owner, Jordi, and the roasted vegetable salad (escalivada) served on our last night here, presented by the lady of the house, Clara, at Can Canyes.
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The next day we enjoy cycling through long, undulating sections of vineyards, but now Montserrat is much nearer, its craggy ravines clearly visible. We opt to cover the bulk of the day’s mileage in one morning, clocking up the 25km to the cava capital, Sant Sadurni d’Anoia, without even breaking into a sweat.
After a nose around the Cava Interpretation Centre, which reveals the world of cava from its origins and history to the production process as well as its role in cultural celebrations, we make tracks to Recaredo, one of the wineries to have considerably increased cava’s quality image, located right here in town.
A new cava classification hit the headlines last year — Cava de Paraje Calificado (think single vineyard or single estate wines). This is top-level stuff, aged for at least 36 months, from an identified vineyard, and it’s on a par with champagne. This is what Recaredo produces — and it boasts the most expensive cava, Turo d’en Mota (£122.49 a bottle if you want to try it, from Les Caves de Pyrene 01483 538820).
The smell of roasting cocoa beans fills the air as we wander back to our bikes; Sant Sadurni is also home to the Simon Coll chocolate factory, which has been making artisanal chocolate since 1840. Of course, we make a diversion and join an engaging 50-minute tour, then stuff our panniers with stock bought from the shop.
The route to our bed for the night, at the very stylish Can Canyes in the small village of Sant Llorenc d’Hortons, takes us past the cava producer Codorniu. It’s Spain’s oldest family business and offers a cava winery tour to beat them all. (It’s still worth dropping by even if you’ve only time for a glass of its finest at the bar in the astonishing winery-turned-visitor centre designed by the art nouveau architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch, a contemporary of Gaudí’s.)
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There’s time for one final glass of fizz sitting on hay bales overlooking the vineyards at Can Canyes while the sun is setting as we plot our last two cava-fuelled days in Barcelona, working through the list of addresses helpfully suggested by producers.
After three days in the saddle it’s great to have a couple of days on foot in the busy Catalan capital to check out the sights and the cava on offer at winemakers’ favourite, Monvinic, followed by a tapas dinner up the street at Mont Bar.
It sets the pace for the next day with a languorous lunch on the beach at Barraca, an organic hotspot where we enjoy octopus rice. This is topped only by the Michelin-starred antics at Dos Palillos, where the former El Bulli head chef, Albert Raurich, is cooking up an Asian-accented tapas storm, perfectly paired with an impressive line-up of brut nature, proving once and for all that cava’s time has come. Move over, prosecco.
Need to know
Fiona Sims was a guest of Inntravel (01653 617000, inntravel.co.uk) which has a four-night Bikes & Bubbles self-guided break in Catalonia from £745pp, half-board, with luggage transported between three hotels and electric-bike hire. Flights to Barcelona cost extra. A two-night add-on in Barcelona costs from £208pp, B&B
Where to taste cava
Pares Balta (paresbalta.com)
Torres (torres.es)
Can Descregut (descregut.com)
Recaredo (recaredo.com)
Juve y Camps (juveycamps.com)
Codorniu (codorniu.com)