Cava Discovery Week
For the last few years, D.O. Cava has held Cava Discovery Week in New York, promoting the wines through the many Spanish bars and restaurants across the vast city. I visited New York last year to explore the city’s Spanish culture, and was excited to return this year. New York is such a vibrant, non-stop, and somewhat overwhelming city: you just have to take a deep breath and dive right in. Focusing on Spanish bars and restaurants stops you getting distracted from everything else that’s going on.
On the Tuesday, I attended a Cava masterclass presented by Mary Gorman-McAdams MW, Mike DeSimone of Wine Enthusiast, and Madeline Maldonado of Mercado Little Spain, a Spanish-themed restaurant. They offered different perspectives on Cava: Mary from an academic viewpoint, Mike a tasting and reviewing background, and for Madeline food, all great ways of looking at and learning about Cava. The focus was on how Cava develops as the lees contact lengthens: each of the seven wines had longer lees ageing as we tasted through them. The quality of all the wines was high, showing that quality isn’t intrinsically linked to the length of lees ageing; at the same time, complexity, structure, and depth of flavour increase with lees ageing, as long as the base wine is of the highest level.
masterclass wines
All of the wines were Reserva (minimum 18 months on the lees) or above. We started with Vilarnau Reserva Rosé ($18; ✪✪✪✪), a perfect example of a fun, fruity wine that has backbone from 24 months ageing in the bottle. It’s 85% Garnacha, which I think has an exciting future as part of the development of the rosé category in Cava. We graduated through the always excellent “Mirgen” Gran Reserva 2018 from Alta Alella, one of my favourite Cava producers. It’s a typical Cava blend, but with no dosage; the aromas and texture are distinctly briny and saline and the style is powerful but elegant ($27, 30+ months lees; ✪✪✪✪✪). “Gelida” Brut Gran Reserva (named after a local village) by Vins el Cep is 50% Xarel·lo, 25% Macabeo, and 15% each of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, and is a bold, powerful, smoky style ($25, 40+ months lees; ✪✪✪✪✪). “La Ticota” Brut Nature Gran Reserva 2015 from Avinyó was also quite saline, with a smoky, nutty, mushroom developing maturity ($50, 50 months lees; ✪✪✪✪✪✪). “Cusiné” Gran Reserva 2013 by Parés Balta is consistently magnificent and one of my favourite Cavas. It’s a blend that has developed over the years, the Chardonnay and Pinot Noir being gradually replaced by Xarel·lo which is now 80% of the blend, an example of how Cava producers have regained confidence in their local grape varieties. ($45, 80 months on lees; ✪✪✪✪✪✪). Tasting through these wines, all of high quality, was an instructive journey on how lees contact adds to their development, concentration, and sophistication, while still maintaining fresh acidity necessary for high-quality, mature sparkling wine.
We finished with two examples of Cava de Paraje Calificado, a single-vineyard designation introduced in 2016. There are only ten vineyards awarded this classification, so it was a treat to get to try two of them. Cordoníu have three of the vineyards, and we tasted “Tros Nou” from 2010 ($95, 90 months on lees; ✪✪✪✪✪✪), which is 100% Pinot Noir. (The wines from the other two vineyards are La Fideura—100% Xarel·lo—and La Plata—100% Chardonnay.) This is a mature, complex expression of Pinot Noir from a warmer climate than Champagne, with aromas of earth, mushroom, truffle, dried fruit, quince, brioche, toast, vanilla, and honey, balanced by high acid.
The standout, though, was the final wine by Vins Família Ferrer (whom I interviewed, alongside Alta Alella and Parés Balta, in a podcast in February). Their vineyard is “Can Sala,” one of the highest vineyards in Catalan Cava. A 50/50 blend of Xarel·lo and Parellada, it’s from 2008, and has received twelve years lees ageing for a wonderfully vinous style. If you have any doubts of the quality that Cava can reach, this wine (and the others tasted too) will dispel them (€60+; ✪✪✪✪✪✪✪).
webinar wines
Our Cava education continued with an online webinar with representatives from four producers. One of them, Dominio de la Vega, is from the Levante zone, 70km inland from the great Mediterranean city of Valencia. The climate is warm, but high elevation of 700-900m cools conditions down (snow and frost are common during the winter). The winery was started in the 1980s and is now located in a building which in the 1990s was a disco which the current winemaker used to frequent: a more current but still very Spanish history compared to some of the Penedès producers who date back hundreds of years. The wines are quite a bit richer and rounder than those from Catalunya. The Rosé Reserva Especial 2020 is 100% Pinot Noir, from two plots at 750m elevation; it’s pleasant and fruity, with a spicy, leesy structure (€20; ✪✪✪✪). The Reserva Especial is 70% Macabeo and 30% Chardonnay; it’s a full-bodied sparkling wine not dissimilar to a California Chardonnay (€20; ✪✪✪). I haven’t tried too many wines from Levante—there are only seven producers—but they can be a little too rich for my taste.
We moved on to two wines from Roger Goulart, who have been making Cava—and only Cava—since 1882. They are a super-traditional representation of Cava and the culture of Catalunya: their winery was designed by a modernista architect at the turn of the century and the cellars are thirty metres underground. All their wines are Reserva (minimum eighteen months lees ageing) and Gran Reserva (minimum 30 months), good examples of aged Cava at relatively affordable prices. The two wines sampled were the Organic Reserva Brut 2018, a typical Cava blend based on 50% Macabeu, with lots of mature, lees-based aromas ($25; ✪✪✪✪); the “Josep Valls” Extra Brut Gran Reserva 2018 had been aged for forty months and is Chardonnay and Xarel·lo based, with Macabeu and Parellada also in the blend. This is a great example of the softness of Cava in comparison to Champagne, but also how there is enough fresh acidity to carry it through a long lees-contact process ($18; ✪✪✪✪).
We finished with two producers whom I visited in April: Vins el Cep, a group of four families who established the winery in 1980 to raise quality and preserve the winemaking history of the area, and Mestres, who were the first to make a Brut Nature back in 1948. I’ve already mentioned “Gelida” by Vins el Cep; Mestres “Visol” 2016 (which means “only wine” due to the absence of added sugar) was especially good, smoky, creamy, round, and mouth-coating, with spice, cooking apples, cinnamon, and nutmeg aromas from five years lees ageing ($27; ✪✪✪✪✪✪).
Part of the reason I was in New York for Cava Discovery Week was to do some staff training in my role as a Certified Cava Educator. I visited a couple of Spanish-themed bars: at Despaña the young Colombian staff were so excited to learn about and taste Cava, definite converts. At La Vara in Brooklyn, the staff were also appreciative to learn about Cava and help explain the wines to their customers (it’s a part of a group of three restaurants, all with a different Spanish theme). There have been a lot of changes in Cava regulations, in order to raise quality and to explain what makes Cava distinctive. Tastings like these inform the trade of the quality that Cava is capable of, and that knowledge can then be passed on to the customer.
An intense week of tasting lots and lots of Cava, while rushing around New York, but it demonstrated just how many very good producers there are making wine that reflects their families’ histories and the land the fruit is grown on. Don’t neglect Cava, explore it!
