166 / 344
160
The wine region: L’Alt Penedès
Trains (Mon–Fri every 30min, Sat & Sun every 60min) from Plaça de Catalunya
or Barcelona Sants run west from Barcelona into
L’Alt Penedès
(
W
www
.altpenedes.net), a region roughly halfway between the city and Tarragona,
devoted to wine production. It’s the largest Catalan producer of still and
sparkling wines, which becomes increasingly clear the further the train heads
into the region, with vines as far as the eye can see on both sides of the track.
There are two main towns to visit, both of which can easily be seen in a single
day:
Sant Sadurní d’Anoia
, the closer to Barcelona (40min), is the self-styled
Capital del Cava, home to around fifty producers of sparkling wine;
Vilafranca
del Penedès
, ten minutes down the line, is the region’s administrative capital
and produces mostly still wine, red and white.
If you’re serious about
visiting vineyards
it’s a trip better done by car, as
many of the more interesting boutique producers lie out in the countryside.
Either of the towns’ tourist offices can provide a good map pinpointing all the
local vineyards as well as the rural farmhouse restaurants that are a feature of this
region. Local tour operators also have various organized trips out into the wine
region, like
Spanish Trails Adventures
(
T
935 001 616,
W
www.spanish-trails
.com), who run full-day, small-group escorted Penedès wine tours (from €85,
transport and lunch included), including a cycling-wine tour option that lets
you bike the quiet country lanes while visiting two or three wineries.
Sant Sadurní d’Anoia
SANT SADURNÍ D’ANOIA
, built on land watered by the Riu Noya, has
been an important centre of wine production since the eighteenth century.
When, at the end of the nineteenth century, French vineyards suffered heavily
from philoxera, Sant Sadurní prospered, though later it too succumbed to the
Freixenet cava factory, Sant Sadurní d’Anoia
OUT OF THE CITY
|
The wine region: L’Alt Penedès