Joan Raventós Rosell | Cava Review

Raventós Rosell – Cava Making at its Most Traditional

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Set in the heart of El Penedès, otherwise known as the cava region, a fantastic old Catalan cottage (the Heretat Vall-Ventós masia) dominates an area of 100 hectares of uninterrupted vineyards. It also houses (for 24 years now) one of the most traditionally run wine and cava-making facilities in the area. As a tour guided by its owner lets you discover, it is an enterprise passionately yet patiently run, with all the knowledge and experienced art to make the produce, which has won them countless international prizes throughout the years.

The grape varieties being grown are Macabeo, Xarel·lo, Parellada and Chardonnay for the cava (although some cava types they produce have other types mixed in the coupage stage of the process); Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Pinot Noir for their red wines; and Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc for their white varieties.

The visit is refreshingly free from big marketing and PR flourish. In fact, it is a quiet and simply run affair where the most important thing is the content of what the winery produces: the facts, the logic, the reason behind the whole process and arrangement are the central part of the walk. Through the explanations facts and numbers are seamlessly weaved in, mentioned in context: you learn about the temperature of the grape at the time of arrival, the capacity of the containers where the fermentation process occurs, the temperature at which said fermentation is controlled, the number of months the wines are stored in barrels or the number of atmospheres a cava bottle will have before being packed, to name a few.

Since our main goal was to learn about their own cava, our questions and interest veered towards this side of their production. Expert yet plain answers to our questions were offered, jumping from the variation in taste (e.g., the sugar content in the cavas) throughout the decades, what makes a Brut and a Brut Nature, the role of technology in such a traditionally-run enterprise…

Among the multiple facts and anecdotes that (happily for us) the seasoned owner provided, we found out that in Raventós Rosell cava bottles are laid to rest for a minimum of two years (some varieties, like the Reserva and Gran Reserva, will not leave the caves until well over 3 years). This brought the owner’s motto to full force: particularly directed at those who, when laying their hands on a “good” bottle of wine/cava, decide to keep it for years, thinking that the longer they keep it, the better the contents will be, he stated ’There is no point in keeping bottles! Buy them and drink them! We producers have already done the “keeping” part! We’ve done our job, we have kept the bottles quietly resting at a constant temperature (around 15º C) and stable environment while we patiently wait for the cava to achieve its best characteristics in terms of bouquet and flavour. Your job as a consumer is to enjoy it! Let us do our job, and you do yours: buy the bottles to actually drink the cava’.

The visit took us literally from the depths of the earth (15 meters below ground) where cava bottles rest while the sediment of their second fermentation slowly settles at the bottom first and then at the neck of the bottle, to be extracted at the very end of the process, right before the bottle is finally labeled and packaged -this at the top floor of the building, where a roof terrace offers you a breath-taking view of the vineyards surrounding the property, with the Mountains of Montserrat on the background.

The end of the visit, a quiet glass of the cava we had learnt so much about, and the making of which we had been following for the last hour, wrapped up a great Sunday experience.

For guided tours and cava and wine tasting events, call ahead to make sure they are open and have room for you!

Published on 23 Oct. 2009