Our friend Salvador lives in a small town located between the Catalonian cities of Villafranca del Penedés and Sant Sadurni d’Anoia. This area is part of the Penedes appellation. As Salvador also works in the wine industry in Spain, he was very knowledgeable about the wine industry in his region and explained to us the current situation of the wine industry where he lives and how things operate from a local point of view.
Penedes is best known for its Cava or Spanish sparkling wine and Sant Sadurni d’Anoia is full of Cava wineries of varying sizes. The three biggest wineries of the region are Freixenet, Codorníu, and the primarily still wine producer Torres. As we were visiting during the holiday season we were unable to tour Freixenet and Codorníu as they were closed but we did take a tour at Torres and a couple of other smaller wineries in the area. It was great for us to taste all of the wines and see how the Spanish deal with the hospitality side of the business. We found Torres to be well run winery and we had a very informative and well run tour and tasting session.
In addition to wine tasting Salvador took us to visit a couple of medieval castles and churches around where he lives. We also explored the towns of Villafranca del Penedés and Sant Sadurni d’Anoia in depth and walked their streets.
As with Barcelona we found this part of Cataluña to be much different culturally than the rest of Spain and the architecture, language & food were unlike what we had experienced in the rest of the country.
We spent nearly a week with Salvador getting to know his region and visiting wineries. His family and friends were very welcoming to us and were great hosts. We tasted lots of really well made wine & Cava and got to see some interesting sights. It was an informative and memorable visit and lots of fun to finally see our friends’ home region.
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