Vineyard, Cellar, and Cavas!

As one of the biggest producer of wines and cavas, travelling in Barcelona will not complete without visitting vineyard. After spent hours of google-ing and compiling information, finally I could find the interesting (and cheap) wine tour in Barcelona. So, without wasting more time - let's get ready to visit one of the oldest cavas manufacturer in Barcelona, FREIXENET. 

About Freixent and Cavas

Freixenet is one of the many cavas producer that has been known since the beginning of 20th Century.  With its special formulation of cavas, Freixenet becomes the number 1 Sparkling Wine in the world.

Cavas or in English it called as sparkling wines. Sparkling wines is not the same with wines nor champagne, it is the type of wines that has bubbles inside  - just like bubbles in cola. These bubbles created during its fermentation process where the yeast produces carbondioxide and creates the bubbles. Because of these bubbles, you could find the sensation as in cola while drinking cavas. The bubbles just buzzzz your mouth! 

Getting Here

The tour is located in the base camp of Freixenet located in Sant' Sadurni d'Anoia. To reach there, you have to take train from Barcelona (the best) to St. Sadurni d'Anoia. The journey will last about 45 minutes. During the journey you could enjoy the great view of vineyard, just like in the movies!

Train Station of Sant Sadurni d'Anoia

For additional info, the ticket from Barcelona city center to Sant' Sadurni d'Anoia could be bought in the train station for 7.20 Euro for 2 ways. 

Train ticket to Sant' Sadurni d'Anoia

From the station, you could easily see the sign of Freixenet - since the building of Freixenet is located right beside the station. You could walk for 5 - 10 minutes from station to Freixenet building.

You could follow the sign in front of the building to register your booking number to make sure that you are already listed in the tour. It is suggested for you to arrive at least 10 minutes before the tour started. 

If you happened to arrive earlier, don't worry - there are lots of interesting things to be enjoyed here. 

The traditional wine grinder

Have you imagined to drive a bottle of wine?

Another old-wines-making machine

The Tours

The tour in Freixenet last about 1.30 hours and only cost for 5.35 Euros - that includes a glass of cavas at the end of the tour! You could book tour by online through this website. 

The tour started with the introduction about Freixenet through movies for about 10 - 15 minutes. After the movies, we walk to the darker room which is the front door of the wine cellar. As we walked, we could see various products of Freixenet and the history behind it. The guide also said proudly that one of their product, Reserva Real was acknowledged by the prince and becomes the prince's favorite cavas. (Too bad I forget who is the prince.) 

As we walked further to the darkness, we could see that there were stairs waiting for us and taking us to the depth - tens meters below the ground. The further we walked, we could feel the air around us become so humid - just like the air in the caves. Few minutes later, drums of cavas welcomed us in the depth. 

Welcome to Freixenet's Cellar. 

Our tour guide started to talk about the cavas, how it is made, how it is fermentated, the process of making that could take years and also the various products of the Freixenet. She named several products, including the oldest one Carta Nevada - which produced in 1941 and the younger one, the one loved by prince - Reserva Real in 1982. 

You could see thousands of wine bottles arranged neatly, despite its (very) old age. It is just amazing if you think that each bottle in these cellars should be rotated EVERY DAY in certain degree to settle down the yeast used to fermentate the grapes. The settled yeast will later be removed from the bottle. This has to be done to make sure that the cavas has a clear solution, without white things floating around the cavas. It will look bad! 

And if you look in more details, there is different design of the wine bottles from the older years (as in Carta Nevada in 1941) with the Reserva Real in 1982. The different is from the bottom part of the bottle. The bottle of Carta Nevada has a flat surface while in Reserva Real has a concave surface. The reason behind it is based on the resistance between flat and concave surfaced bottle. So, in producing the cavas, the bottle could be shattered due to the excessive amount of gas made during fermentation. In the beginning of production, the bottle with flat surface tend to shatter often and there are lots of loss because of this. Through years, finally they could came up with the new idea - which is by changing the flat surface into the concave surface. The concave bottle shows a better resistance in holding the pressure during the fermentation and resting time compared with the flat one. From this point, the bottle started to be changed from flat to concave surface.

We walked, walked and walked without realizing that we have already reach the bottom of the cellar - which is located more than 50 meters BELOW the ground. We have reached the bottom, the oldest part of the cellar which is built back in 1922 - and this time it is time for us to leave the past and move forward to the future. 

In the future (modern technology), we could see a very different sight compared with the one in the cellar. Even though the future is still located inside the cellar, we could see that there are more bottles stored inside. With the help of technology, the rotating process that is required in cavas making, has been replaced with the rotating machine that could rotate hundreds of bottles at once. Undoubtly, it saves LOTS OF TIME and ENERGY. However, there are still certain products that are producing manually - though it is very limited.

The fun began when we finally see the little train inside the warehouse. This little train will give us a round trip inside the warehouse, production area and also take us back to the ground. The ride was fun as the train moves faster - we felt like we were playing roler coaster inside the cavas warehouse! 

The little train!

Few minutes later, we touched the ground and saw the beautiful view of the city of Sant' Sadurni d'Anoia. 

The little train stopped nearby the building - which later we found out that this building is the place where we could take our cavas. 

The mascot of freixenet

So, here we go - a glass of cold cavas to refresh our body! 

CHEERS!