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Hello and welcome to your new Bonner Private Wines video, where we learn and explore together the wonderful world of wine weekly. Today, I want to take you again to Spain and continue exploring with you its wine wonders, led by the wines that you are going to be receiving very soon in our upcoming Spanish wine collection from the club.
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Let me tell you about a stunning wine country that the lively people of Barcelona call their garden, where they love to spend their weekends and have their occasional wine escapes to an area that is to Barcelona and Catalonia what Sonoma or the Napa Valley are to San Francisco, or what upstate New York or Long Island are to New Yorkers.
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Let me tell you about the beautiful and incredibly diverse wine appellation of Penedès. Let’s dive in.
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Penedès is not a very famous name on the international wine scene. Not a name that anyone a little interest in wine in the U.S. or the UK, for example, would know about. But it is the most important wine area in this rich part of north eastern Spain that has its own culture and language, and that surrounds the delightful city of Barcelona and called Catalunya.
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In Catalunya, you have two major cities. Barcelona is by far the biggest, with an international notoriety and the other one very significant locally is Tarragona. The rural area of Penedès is located exactly in the middle of them, about 40 miles or an hour driving from each urban hub. So it is, for many locals, one of their favorite weekend or holiday destinations.
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If they’re after beautiful landscapes and outdoor activities, and perhaps a few wine tastings too.
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Penedès has everything in terms of landscapes and terroirs, and that’s because it’s a large valley that goes down from the mountains to the Mediterranean Sea. So landscapes and vegetation are extremely diverse. As a consequence, the grapes that you can grow and the wines that you can make are very varied too. I’ll get to the styles of wines produced here in just a minute, but so you understand how it comes to be, you have to know how the area is structured in terms of its topography and geography.
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The top of the valley is called the Alt Penedès, or the high Penedès, in Catalan and lies higher up in the hills between 1,600 and 2,600ft of altitude. So it’s quite some solid altitude. It’s not Argentina, but it’s pretty high. This area is cooler and greener, therefore featuring stunning mountain background, and counts with many lush green vineyards benefitting from those milder growing conditions which allow us to make the freshest white wine styles in the area.
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The part of Penedès that’s on the coast is called the Baix Penedès, or the low Penedès in Catalan because of course it’s at about sea level. So we have here a true Mediterranean climate, really dry and warm in winter, hot, of course, in summer, the perfect touristic destination with its delightful little historic port towns and beautiful beaches. The vines you can grow here on the coast are therefore specialized in the production of full bodied red wines.
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The Middle Penedès or Medio Penedès is a transitional area between the two, therefore a very versatile and fertile area where a lot of vineyards are located and a part that can produce quite a lot of wines. It’s the biggest producing area within Penedès itself. Now for a quick reference point, the famous and quite large Spanish wine region of Rioja that you’ve probably heard about so famous.
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It’s further to the east of northern Spain, produces about 300 million bottles of wine per year. That’s Rioja. Penedès, in comparison, makes about 5% of that. So about 15, nearly 15 million barrels annually. So it’s not small, but it’s not nearly as big. Needless to say that the millions of foreign or Catalan and Spanish tourists visiting the area, especially during the hot months, drink their fair share of those 15 million bottles per year, just they drink them locally.
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While they’re on vacation. So let’s talk about what kind of wines they can buy and taste while in Penedès
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Firstly, essentially this is the area that produces the huge majority of grapes for the popular Spanish sparkling wine style called Cava. Cava is the Spanish Champagne or the Spanish Prosecco, although it is much closer in quality and style to champagne than it is to Prosecco. While, the grapes for cava can be made pretty much anywhere in Spain, legally, 95%
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in fact, of those grapes that are used for the production of Spanish Cava, the whole of Spain, come from Penedès. Even the city that is considered the capital city of cava, where most of the most famous and popular Cava houses are located, like Freixenet or Codorníu, the city of Sant Sadurní d’Anoia, is located in the Alt Penedès.
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So the highest part of Penedès, as we’ve discussed, naturally, those Cava wineries source most most of their grapes around them, so from the high Penedès. The grapes used for Cava are mainly local ones, really crisp and vibrant whites like Macabeo, Perellada, Xarel-Lo, although they use quite a bit of chardonnay as well to give it a bit more modern and maybe refined touch.
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Also, aside from the bubbles, many local producers that are not sparkling wine makers use those same grapes to make vibrant and crisp, still white wine. So you will find delicious Chardonnays from Penedès as well. You’ll also find wines from local grapes that are not used as sparkling, but are still wines like Perellada. You can even find some crisp whites that are made from riesling and gewurztraminer, more German grapes.
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Which is to say that it is a fairly cold climate area thanks to those altitude of vineyards. Now in the mid Penedès and the lower Penedès is where you going to be finding the coastal heat. And therefore producers can make the more traditional Mediterranean style of bigger rich reds from the typical Spanish Mediterranean grapes like Garnacha, Grenache or Carinena, Corvino in French, monastrell, mourvedre, or even the occasional Tempranillo.
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A very famous and notable producer of Penedès that you need to hear about is the one that is credited with pioneering wine quality in the area. For non sparkling wines, especially, the largest winery here is called Torres, founded in 1870 by brothers Jaime and Miguel Torres. They have all along the 20th century pulled the reputation of Penedès up with quality products and a focus on exports, with brands like the popular wine Sangre de Toro, the bulls blood, that is popular all around the world.
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I believe in supermarkets or their Grand Coronas Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon. They also make many high end small production reds, like their famous Mas la Plana, or their Reserva real. Now Penedès produces indeed also a lot of excellent Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot grapes, as they planted quite a bit of those around the 1990s when those French grapes were so popular globally everywhere, they had to plant some of those to like the wine that you’re going to be receiving, that we are bringing you as part of our next collection from the club.
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Now, thanks to tourists and also in their own efforts, many small producers now make excellent wines in Penedès, the crisp white wines, but also fine reds that they able to sell locally to visitors, which always helps financially, but also sometimes export them. But not all that often do. They export them because Penedès as an appellation name, despite being quite famous and prestigious in Catalonia and in Spain, is not all that well known internationally.
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But now you know. Thanks for watching. Keep watching the channel. Subscribe if you’re not already, give it a like to support. It helps us making more of those videos and I will see you soon in the wonderful world of wine. Cheers!
