Our favourite options to spend a day among vineyards, cellars or wines are the following:
Tour with visit to Torres, Freixenet and Jean Leon. It's a fantastic option: no driving and the Torres tour with wines and Iberian cured meats. A very appetising experience with excellent wines and iberian food and wine pairing.
Freixenet and food
Perfect for combining a visit to these renowned cellars with a tasting of high quality gastronomy. We can organise other exclusive wine tours near Barcelona for you, just contact us! These include meals, food and wine pairings, vineyard experiences and even Michelin restaurants if you wish.
The wineries near Barcelona have become a major tourist attraction for many foreign tourists who, every day, go on the wine tours of Barcelona organised by different operators. Some combine a visit to Montserrat with a visit to a winery, others combine cava and wine, and most of them include the concept of tapas.
Museums, festivals, wine cellars and cellars and beautiful vineyard landscapes await you near Barcelona. But only we can offer you private visits to the most exclusive wineries in Catalonia.
Barcelona is especially famous for its cavas
Cava is the only designation of origin that allows its wines to be produced in other areas (in order to do so, a winery would have to prove its history as a producer), so it is possible, although not very common, to find wineries producing cava in other areas.
What is certain, however, is that more than 90% of cava is produced in the area south of Barcelona. Sant Sadurni de Ainhoa is the capital of cava. It is a town that lives by and for cava. Sant Sadurni is home to the two most famous wineries in the world of cava: Freixenet and Codorniu. There are many more, however, that can be found in this town and that can be a very good option for a romantic hotel break near Barcelona.
Sant Sadurni is also known for its Phylloxera Festival
Phylloxera, the plague that nearly destroyed the vineyards of Europe, receives special treatment in Sant Sadurni. Many Spanish regions owe it to Phylloxera that they did a lot of business selling wine to France when the French vineyards were devastated.
What was initially good news was cut short when the plague spread to different regions of wine-growing Spain, leaving an uncertain outlook and the crisis of an entire industry.
But Sant Sadurni celebrates the plague, undoubtedly because of the doors it opened at the time.
Sant Sadurni is very well communicated from Barcelona, and anyone wishing to visit wineries from Barcelona only has to take the motorway towards Tarragona and take the Sant Sadurni exit. There, a large roundabout welcomes us with allegories to the world of sparkling wine.
Another highly recommended option
Both Freixenet and Codorniu offer visits of great interest. Both visits are suitable for children, as most of the visits are made using small trains that run through the facilities where the cava is stored.
Both wineries stand out for their impressive facilities and in both cases visitors are welcomed with a video that, if there is any doubt, makes clear the family vocation of both businesses. Both wineries have architectural elements of great interest, although Codorniu is possibly the one with the most outstanding aesthetics.
In Sant Sadurni itself, there are some cellars (or caves) that offer interesting visits. Cavas Gramona has in its old facilities all the charm you are looking for in a visit to a traditional cellar. Gramona has more modern facilities outside the centre of Sant Sadurni, but preserves its old facilities for the visitor's delight.
Another singular example of the comparison with the enormous cellars of Freixenet and Codorniu can be found in cavas Conde de Valicourt, the smallest of the city's cellars, which offers a very different model of cava to that of the big brands.
If you are looking for a visit to a cellar surrounded by vineyards, we recommend you leave Sant Sadurni and go to cavas Nadal. Nadal welcomes us with the concept of a Chateau cellar and, like most producers, it houses the secret of a cave where the sparkling wine ages.
This is the end of the chapter on cavas. The other great wine town south of Barcelona is Vilafranca del Penedès.
Vilafranca del Penedès
Vilafranca is a town with a lot of history and with important chapters during the Civil War. Vilafranca is home to the Penedés Wine Museum (Vinseum). It is a museum in the main square of Vilafranca, in front of its beautiful church.
Vinseum offers an interesting visitor for the information-hungry tourist. Its different floors have a large number of information panels that provide many details about different aspects related to viticulture and winemaking. Particularly interesting are the sections that talk about social elements of the Penedès, as well as all the technical and scientific aspects that provide information about the fight against phylloxera and other pests.
Just as we speak of Sant Sadurni as the capital of cava, we can define Vilafranca as the Capital of the Penedès. A very important role in the Penedès wine scene is played by the Torres winery. Its visit shows us similar dimensions to those of the Codorniu or Freixenet wineries, but in this case designed for the production of quality still wines.
If you prefer smaller wineries, the area around Vilafranca offers a good number of family wineries. The aforementioned Nadal winery is a good example between Sant Sadurni and Vilafranca.
Chateau Jean Leon style winery
Not far away, in the town of Torrelavit, you will find the Chateau Jean Leon style winery, also from the Torres group. Pares Balta is a family winery closer to Vilafranca and with a strong commitment to organic wines.
North of Barcelona is the closest wine region to Barcelona: Alella
It is a small wine-producing area with very few wineries that have managed to preserve the winemaking tradition despite its proximity to the capital city of Barcelona. To the east we also find Pla y Bages, which offers wines with a very different personality. Here we are higher than in Penedés and the climate is less Mediterranean, which gives a very different style to the wines of this area close to Barcelona.
