When you want to go from
the fantastic to the sublime,
then you definitely need ageing.

Voices of Wine
with Ferran Centellas
Sommelier
VERSATILITY

When I worked in the El Bulli restaurant,
we used to serve sparkling
wine non-stop, every day.
This is because the versatility
you get from sparkling wine,
with their food-friendly aspect,

helps people like us who have long,
complex tasting menus,
by making our job much easier.

STYLES

With regard to the consumer,
it’s very good to explain that
there are different styles
and that there are fresh,
light cavas and sparkling wines,
and that there are intense sparkling wines
with more body and concentration
and that these two products
are made in the same way
but taste totally different.

PARADIGM SHIFT

I think that styles can be produced anywhere,

and that there’s a link between
the world’s great sparkling wines,
which is their ageing,
beyond the varietal, beyond the terroir,

the common tie between all the great cavas,
champagnes and sparkling wines
is the ageing.

So I think that a style is not particularly

concentrated in one region, but centres,

in the case of sparkling wines,
on a production method.
LONG-AGEING

Long ageing is what gives
sparkling wines greater
intensity, power, body and,
I’d venture to say, quality.
There are fantastic young sparkling wines,

but when you want to go from
the fantastic to the sublime,
then you definitely need ageing
and the enrichment that sparkling
wines get from the yeasts,
the subtleties and the depth.

The longer the ageing,
the deeper the aromas.
RAW MATERIAL

If, when a product is created,
it’s not been made for ageing,
It’s going to age very quickly and poorly.

Long ageing is, of course,
an indicator of quality,
but a lot depends on the raw material

used to make the product.

BLIND TASTING

Blind tasting is a wonderful exercise,

and always helps me to be more objective.

Sometimes, when you taste blind,

you miss some subtlety

or you don’t understand a particular touch,

and perhaps you don’t appreciate
it as you should,
but this is a much smaller risk

if you weigh it up against
the objectivity you gain.
This is what happened to us
at the tasting we did
for Jancis Robinson and
the Consejo Regulador,
where surprisingly, III Lustros perhaps

came out a tad above, but of course,

III Lustros is a flawless wine,

a textbook wine, that has it all,

without any excess, but well put together,

with a great deal of depth,
with a great deal of power,
and very well balanced.

In a blind tasting, I’m not surprised that
this wine does, very, very well,
because it really is a product that

combines freshness with intensity,

it’s very well made,

so I can understand why it scores highly.

PRIDE
For me, honestly, Gramona is a source of pride.

It’s one of those cava producers

that you always talk about, explain
or recommend to friends,
to sommeliers or to wine lovers,

and you talk about it with great pride,

positioning them where they belong,

in the upper echelons of quality.

So I’m always pleased when I’m asked

and I can recommend Gramona.

Other voices of wine
I think that cava should have its own language,
and the cava from Penedés,
which is where the majority
of cava production takes place in Spain,
should look for its own message.
Is the goal really to
compete with champagne?
Couldn't we be the sparkling wine
of the Mediterranean?

If there hadn’t been this movement
by Gramona,
then this new category
of cava de paraje calificado wouldn’t exist
(qualified single estate cava)
and no one right now
would think that cava is a high quality wine.
