Cava Tasting

Given that our friend David is as much a fan of wine as we are (maybe more), of course we had to do some sort of wine tour from Barcelona. We chose a tour that actually allowed us to combine tasting cava (Spanish sparkling wine) and regular wine. After about an hour bus ride we arrived at Pere Ventura.

The name "cava" is derived from the word for wine cellar or caves used to age the wine. Cava is produced in the same way that champagne is, so we did not learn a great deal on the tour that we didn't already know, but the Pere Ventura caves were impressive, holding around 3 million bottles, piled floor to ceiling throughout. 

After the tour, of course there was a tasting, which came with small bites of food for each cava (although it paled by comparison to the food offerings at our wine tastings in Sicily). Pere Ventura produces several levels of cava and is a slick operation. There were terrific explanations of the different levels of cava and how each would match with a different food or meal.

After the cava tour and tasting, we drove a few minutes to the Can Bas cellars, which are owned by Pere Ventura for the second part of the tour. There, we rode 4-wheel-drive vehicles to get a brief tour of the (extensive) vineyards. Given the sun and heat, it was nice that  the winery even provided us with hats. It was a friendly and fun group -- with Americans, Brazilians, and even a couple from Estonia.

As you can see, the vineyards are lovely and it was interesting learning about the different plots and how the age of the vines impacts the wines they can make from those grapes.

After our safari (hah!) we did a tour of the Can Bas winery, the most interesting part of which was learning that the winery ages some of its wines in clay amforas, a vessel used in Greek and Roman times to store and transport wine.

The wine aged in the amforas is mostly used to blend with wine aged in oak barrels (like normal), but they do have a wine that is entirely aged in amforas. Unfortunately, that wine is basically impossible to obtain because there is so little of it, so we did not get to try it.

The tasting of the Can Bas wines was in a lovely room, but we all agreed that the wines were not as good as the cavas of Pere Ventura.

Overall, it was a very nice wine-tasting tour, and the true sign of success was that a number of our compatriots slept during the hour-or-so ride back to Barcelona (wish we had gotten a picture). We spent the time talking to an American couple, of which the wife was born in the Azores. The Azores are islands in the middle of the Atlantic that belong to Portugal. They were kind of on our list of places to visit, but after talking to her, they moved way up. Sounds like a really beautiful and relaxing place.

Hasta pronto,

Jeff and Shana