Cava DO

I just wanna focus on some different varietals.

So today, I got some cava.

[gentle music] Cava, for people who don't know, is a type of sparkling wine.

I believe that it's mainly made in Spain, and it is a Spanish sparkling wine.

It's not very expensive.

So we're gonna pour a little bit of cava.

This one, so I can tell you what I do know about it.

This is a, uh, Cava, uh, Brut Nature Premium Cuvee Premium Sparkling Wine.

Despite the growth in terms of scale, England still isn't close to the major sparkling wine regions.

For example, England's 6.2 million bottles sold compares to roughly 190 million for Cava, 266 million for Champagne, and 667 million for Prosecco.

Oh, my.

So it's still just a fraction.

Prosecco is obviously having a worldwide phenomenon right now.

I went to the Cava meeting this year where Cava announced its new organic-only designation, Guarda Superior.

And I'm sure they're going to be taking on Champagne in that way because Champagne uses a horrific amount of herbicides.

And I don't know if anyone here reads Carolyn Henry, but she's sort of the person in Champagne that tracks this.

So my question is around the same topic.

Why haven't we come up with a region or sort of our own ablation of sparkling wine for California.

You have Cava, which used to be called champagne, Prosecco.

I mean, at some point, all sparkling wine used to be called champagne.

It's aged 18 months on the lees, which is longer than basic champagne requires.

This is Spanish, and it's technically not Cava, although it comes out of the Cava tradition because this family has been working in wine since 1497.

Can you even believe that? 21 generations of the Reventos family.

Wow.

They're giving Antinori in Tuscany a run for their money for sure.

They thought that Cava was kind of a generic name that didn't really convey anything.

And it is.

Cava just means cave.

And then I think as well, just not restricting it to reds.

A lot of Cava or a lot, a lot of sparkling, uh, a lot of Corpană, uh, or sparkling Penedès comes from that region.

And, you know, aside from some of the, some of the sparkling you'll see in supermarket from the area, but- A lot of karma is made using traditional method, which is effectively the same way you're making champagne.

And we'll talk about s- sparkling a little bit later, I'm sure.

And we'll talk more about that here lastly.

And then I stick to Cava.

And Cava is a sparkling wine from Spain.

It's done in the traditional champagne style method.

So you have some options here.

I really like Pinot with grilled salmon.

If you want to go the pork and poultry route, you can go roasted chicken.

turkey pork tenderloin depending on what it's glazed with or marinated with but you you can't really go wrong there and then obviously um the earthiness of the earthy characteristics like i mentioned before on that pinot go really well with things like sauteed mushrooms anything roasted that's like an earth root vegetable beets turnips that kind of thing and then lastly uh but not least um for sure the uh Cava, you know, Spanish tapas for a reason.

International.

Cava.

Cava? Yep, that would be good.

Um, Prosecco, which you said at the top, that's kind of all the rage at the moment.

Yeah, I'm really...

Um, okay.

Looking forward to it.

I haven't tried a Cava before, so I'm, I'm looking forward to that.

Smaller places, you know, there's a ton of commercial wineries in that area than... typically there's going to be, you know what I mean? So like finding wine regions, like, and I hate, I love Napa Valley, don't get me wrong, but like look at the Willamette Valley versus Napa Valley as far as like amount of organic farms versus non-organic farms.

Like when you go to Oregon, you can't like throw a stone without hitting a biodynamic farm because that area was, and I feel that that way a lot about regions in France and in Spain, but like Cava, like Penendez versus, you know, going up the coast a little bit to like Amporta, on the coast of France and getting a coastal sparkling wine from Amporta versus something from the kind of sprawling larger Cavadio.

Interesting.

Okay, I like that.

Yeah, I'm not a beer guy.

I will say that Cava is very easy to embrace here, and the wine in general is very easy to embrace.

I mean, as I'm sure you know, you can get a good bottle of Cava for $4 here for a Euro, and you can find some good, hearty Rioja and good local wines.

Spanish wines are great, and it's very... relatively inexpensive.

It can really, you know, if you're living on a budget, you can, you can really help yourself out here, uh, just by from the cava and the wine.