By Charlene Medders
Winery Alta Alella is located just outside of Barcelona with an amazing view of the Mediterranean Sea.
The city of Barcelona. It’s famous for its beautiful beaches, exquisite food, unique mountain views and talented artists and architects. Directly in the city, people can’t see the beautifully showcased countryside of Spain, which has vineyards that span hundreds of miles. Spain is known for its Sangria, isn’t it?
Alta Alella, located just outside of Barcelona on the Mediterranean Sea, is just one of the many wineries in the region. But several things about this winery make it unique, and it’s surely a fun place to visit when traveling to Barcelona.
Alta Alella is a family-owned winery that creates organic, all-natural wine for everyone to enjoy. It’s a great place to learn about the Spanish and Catalan cultures while also tasting amazing wine and cava straight from the source.
This family-owned winery offers visitors a taste of Barcelona from a family with a history in viticulture.
There’s no better way to try out Spanish wine than from this winery. Trying wine in a restaurant or supermarket just doesn’t allow you to fully experience what Spain has to offer.
Alta Alella was established in 1991 on the 19th century Can Genís estate by the Pujol-Busquets Guilléns family.
Viticulture is practically in this family’s DNA, as parents Josep Maria and Cristina taught their daughters everything they knew about wine and cava culture when raising them. This turned into the family’s permanent lifestyle.
The estate where the winery is set is the perfect landscape for vineyards, and the family makes sure to respect and preserve the beautiful scenery so that people can come and enjoy it for generations that follow.
Wine Tourism
Alta Alella often hosts several kinds of tours for people interested in trying the wine and learning more about viticulture in Barcelona. The first is a traditional tour and tasting, where visitors can explore the vineyard, see the wine cellar and aging area, and proceed to the visitor’s center for a tasting of 4 wines and cavas.
Each step in the process of creating wine is extremely important, including the harvest, fermentation and aging.
This is an amazing experience for anyone, whether you’re a big fan of wine or not. Walking through the vineyard, you immediately see the connection between the wine and the sea. As you admire beautiful vines all around, you can see the Mediterranean not too far in the distance.
The location of this winery couldn’t be more perfect. As you smell the fresh salt air, it’s almost as if you’re tasting the sea in your wine. Francesc, a tour guide who works at Alta Alella, said the location of a vineyard has a lot to do with how the wine will taste.
“We love the location of our winery,” he said. “It’s extremely important that it’s close to the sea because it gives our wine an elegant, special taste.”
Other tours at the winery include a gourmet visit, where visitors have a private tour of the vineyard and winery. They can then enjoy a delicious gourmet tapas meal paired with 6 wines and cavas.
If you’d like an even closer look into the wine and sea connection, you must try the sea and vineyards sailing. With this tour, you sail along the coast of the Mediterranean with an exclusive charter boat. Afterward, you visit Alta Alella for a wine tasting and tour.
Cava Territories
If you’ve never heard of or tried cava before, you’re in for a treat at Alta Alella. Cava is a sparkling Spanish wine, and it’s made almost exactly like champagne.
Cava is unique for its bubbly consistency and flavor. It’s not too sweet but also not too bitter, making it a great celebratory drink that almost anyone can enjoy.
Xavier, another tour guide of the winery, said Alta Alella creates specialty cava using two fermentations of its grapes. Normally, wineries only have one fermentation to make their cavas.
He’s happy that he can do something slightly different when making the cava. Ultimately, that slight change will create a big difference in the taste of the cava, helping Alta Alella stand out from other wineries in the region.
“The world of wine is huge,” he said. “You can be as spontaneous and crazy as you want.”
The winery’s tag line even expresses its love for cava. It states, “True love for organic cava.”
This organic cava, like the wine at Alta Alella, gives visitors a taste of Barcelona. Xavier said the land the winery is on is a land of white wine, but they still make red, white and cava. With each recipe, they take the taste of the wine and cava into big consideration.
“We pride ourselves on having a taste of the sea in our cava and wine,” Xavier said.
Hundreds of bottles of wine and cava sit and age, slowly preparing for consumption.
Organic Winemaking
Not only does Alta Alella pride itself on its tasteful wine and cava, but Xavier said the family takes extra steps in making organic wine. They are always finding innovative ways to have the purest grapes and wine possible, maintaining a pact with nature and a commitment to the product.
The family continues to offer natural wine that has low intervention and no added sulfites. Sulfites, which are different from sulfates, are chemicals used to preserve food or beverages during preparation, storage or distribution so they don’t turn brown or have any discoloration.
While sulfites have been used in wine for centuries, Alta Alella believes there shouldn’t be any added into their wine, as it isn’t consistent with their commitment to being organic.
Another way the winery likes to give back to nature is by naming some of their natural wines after the birds that live in Serralada de Marina’s Natural Park. The family aimed to give tribute to the birds that sing melodies throughout the vineyard, sweetening the grapes with their music.
A Great Place to Visit
Alta Alella is a must-see for everyone visiting Barcelona who desires to escape the city for a few hours and truly immerse themselves into Spanish wine culture. The winery is a quick trip out of the city, and it offers an experience that tourists won’t get if they stay within the city limits.
A variety of wines and cavas are ready to be bought in the visitor's center.
After a tour and tasting several kinds of cava and wine, you can even buy a bottle at the visitor’s center at a reasonable cost. It’s the perfect gift for wine lovers everywhere.
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