Country Cava

 

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The first thing you notice on arriving by train in Sant Sadurni d’Anoia in the Penedès region of Catalonia, the Cava capital of Spain, a mere 30 kilometres from Barcelona, is a cloistered building with a distinctive coloured-tile facade directly opposite the deserted platform of the tiny station. This is the somewhat unassuming home of Cavas Freixenet, now the world’s largest exporter of Cava sparkling wines and a company that exports a staggering 80 per cent of Spain’s Cava. The winery is known globally for its frosted-bottle Carta Nevada, created in 1941, and its black-bottle Cordón Negro, launched in 1974, both instantly recognisable sparkling wines that appealed to the wine-buying public because of their affordability.

It’s fitting that there’s a statue of the Benedictine monk Dom Pierre Pérignon, widely credited (albeit incorrectly) with inventing Champagne in the 17th century, holding a bunch of grapes outside the front door and paying homage to the Spanish craft of making Cava. Until Spain joined the European Union in 1986, this sparkling wine was still known as xampan in Catalonia and champán throughout the rest of the Spanish-speaking world. The new name, derived from the underground cellars (cavas) used to store and age bottles, was provisionally accepted by the European Union in 1989 when there were less than 100 bodegas producing the wine.

Full recognition took another three years of complex negotiation before all the rules and regulations defining Cava were finalised by the EU, with many areas forfeiting the right to call their wines Cava unless they replanted their vineyards with approved grapes in delineated vineyards. Catalonia fought unsuccessfully for the exclusive right to the name, despite being the first to make it in Spain, and the French objected to the term método champánes (méthode champenoise), which was banned in 1994 and replaced with the phrase método tradicional. By that time, there were more than 250 bodegas making Cava, most of them in and around the tiny village of Sant Sadurni d’Anoia and the region of Alt Penedès, where 95 per cent of all Spanish Cava is currently produced, the rest being made in parts of Navarra, Rioja, Castile-León, Valencia, Extremadura, Aragón and Pais Vasco (Basque region).

Today, the regulations are simple – grapes must come from listed vineyards and white Cava wines can only be made solely from, or in combination with, parellada, xarel-lo, macabeo, subirat and chardonnay grapes, the latter still subject to disapproval from many traditional winemakers who prefer to use the local grape varieties. For rosé (rosado or rosat) styles of Cava, only garnacha (grenache) and monastrell (mourvèdre) can be used. And, of course, the wines are made in exactly the same way as Champagne, even if the term método champánes can no longer be used. The only difference is their ageing potential, which is less impressive than Champagne, so most Cava is destined for immediate consumption. The few notable exceptions include Freixenet’s expensive Reserva Real, first produced in 1987 to commemorate a visit to the winery by King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia of Spain (and still only made in exceptional vintages, often with the addition of some chardonnay), and Segura Viudas Reserva Heredad, which spends five years in the bottle. By law, most Cava also has to spend a minimum of nine months on lees and cannot be sold for a year, after which it can be called crianza. Reserva wines spend 18 months in the bottle and gran reserva wines more than 30 months. The wines are also made in a variety of styles, such as extra brut, brut, extra seco, seco, semiseco and dulce, according to the dosage of sugar added after disgorgement.

Of all the bodegas in Sant Sadurni d’Anoia (some other notable ones being the other mega producers Codorniu, Raimat and Marqués de Monistrol), Freixenet can be credited with creating worldwide interest in Spanish sparkling wine. The company was founded in 1889, at a time when phylloxera was ravaging the vineyards of Europe. Two wine dynasties combined forces through the marriage of Pedro Ferrer Bosch, the youngest son of the Ferrers, a winemaking family who owned La Freixenada (the name means “ash grove”), a substantial bodega in the Alt Penedès since the 13th century, and Dolores Sala Vivé of the Sala family, owners of Casa Sala, an exporter of wine to Latin America.

Soon the energetic newlyweds decided to make champán under the Freixenet label, probably inspired by other winemakers such as Josep Raventós i Fatjó of Codorniu, who was the first to find commercial success with his método champánes sparkling wines a decade earlier. They began the slow process of building cavas underneath the winery, and today more than 54 square kilometres of underground cellars are needed to store more than 120 million bottles of Cava fermenting at any one time.

Their label was also the first Cava company to use imaginative advertising, featuring a cheeky young boy dressed in red clutching a bottle. It is still an iconic image for all Spaniards, as instantly recognisable as the Coca-Cola trademark is globally. Business boomed, and by 1935 their ambitious export dreams were realised with the opening of offices in London and in New Jersey in the US, and continuing exports to South and Latin America. Tragedy struck during the Spanish Civil War with the death of Pedro and his eldest son, but with four other children to feed, his widow Dolores carried on regardless. She remained actively involved in the business until her death in 1978. When her eldest living son José Ferrer, a savvy marketing man, finally took the helm in 1977, the company’s fortunes had already been made with the slow purchase of other wineries in the region. But they were about to change dramatically again.

Television proved the turning point, and the first Christmas TV commercial featuring Liza Minelli aired in 1977. Ever since, the Freixenet Christmas commercial is eagerly awaited in Spain. Over the years, it has featured celebrities from home and overseas, including Gene Kelly, Ann-Margret, Shirley MacLaine, Raquel Welch, Jacqueline Bisset, Pierce Brosnan, Paul Newman, Sharon Stone, Christopher Reeve, Demi Moore, Anthony Quinn, Kim Basinger, Penelope Cruz, Antonio Banderas and Gwyneth Paltrow, to name a few, always complete with dancing girls known as burbujas and famous musicians. Although many of these advertisements are kitsch by today’s standards, there is still something endearing about these big-production affairs, and it will be interesting to see what the film director Martin Scorsese does with this year’s commercial filmed in New York.

Still family-owned, Freixenet is now the 10th largest private wine company in the world.  With subsidiaries across Spain, Portugal, California, Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, France (where it finally got its hands on venerable Champagne house Henri Abelé) and Australia (where it owns Katnook Estate, Deakin Estate and Riddoch Coonawarra, all part of the Wingara Wine group), Freixenet has also become the world’s largest producer of sparkling wines. This is no mean feat for a company that was once derided by both wine writers and snobs suckled on Champagne and New World sparkling wines.

At Segura Viudas, their other important Cava producer, which was purchased in the early 1980s in the nearby village of Sant Sadurni d’Anoia, a modern winery is today centred around a 12th-century farmhouse and watchtower displaying Romanesque and Gothic architectural features. This well-regarded Cava house was established in 1954, and although it produces more than 11 million bottles of wine annually, it still creates very traditional Cava. Its best wine, Segura Viudas Reserva Heredad, is a gran reserva made only from the highest quality macabeo and parellada grapes, and comes in a distinctive antique bottle with a pewter base and family crest.

For Josep Bujan, head winemaker at Freixenet since 1980, the challenge is more technological as he attempts to improve and refine Cava production procedures with an assortment of high-tech computers and gadgets that would be the envy of many oenologists. With the European Space Agency, he has created a computerised method for adding live yeasts to the wines, as opposed to dry yeasts as many Cava companies do. One of Catalonia’s most committed oenologists and academics (sensory anlaysis is his particular passion), Bujan is also adept at handcrafting interesting, mainly single-bottle varietals, such as the 2004 Monastrell-Xarel-lo, 2001 Malvasia and 2004 Trepat. These allow his more traditional winemaking skills to shine, but sadly these wines are not yet available in Australia.

Today, Pedro Ferrer, son of José, leads the global assault, tirelessly searching for emerging markets in countries such as Russia and Poland on his travels around the Freixenet empire. “Every year we try and increase production a little, and we really want to concentrate on creating Cavas that promote our local grape varieties,” he explains. Sitting on a vine-shaded terrace outside his headquarters, you wouldn’t think that Freixenet is the largest Cava producer in the world. Most of the action goes on underground or in the vineyards, where more than 2000 local growers help supply the huge quantities needed to keep the operation going.

It might seem strange to drink Cava when we have such fine sparkling wine in the New World, but it certainly makes sense in Spain, especially on a fiercely hot afternoon when the fresh citrus aromas of the Freixenet wines unfurl as a sublime accompaniment to the local dishes – thin wisps of sweet jamón ibérico, nutty black olives and aged Manchego cheese. Taken as the simple yet satisfying wines they are, they also offer great value as the perfect aperitif, particularly when you visit the quaint village square of Sant Sadurni d’Anoia set in the Cava heartland.

WORDS ANDY HARRIS PHOTOGRAPHY DAVID LOFTUS

This article appeared in the December/January 2008 issue of Gourmet Traveller WINE.