Spain's space in between
Year 15, No. 15
Highlights: Penedès 2025 Eastern Catalunya 2025
Spain is only a little larger than California geographically, albeit in a form that’s more of a block than a rectangle with an elbow. More important than respective shapes is that Spain has a much larger population than California at just about 50 million, compared to the ‘Golden’ State’s 40 million.
To me however, both places seem rather crowded, at least from a certain vantage and that’s because the majority of the populations live on the coast. For California, various sources stolen compiled by AI state that 68% of the state lives along the coast.
For Spain, the figures get a bit wonky and run from 30-60%, but the lower number appears to be based upon older statistics. Any total however is skewed a great deal by about seven million of those people living “not on the coast” being based in or around Madrid. Thus, the coast is person heavy and 80% of the 97 million tourists that visit Spain each year (a record…!), go to the coast.
However you slice up this chunk of Iberia, the truth is, there’s a lot of space in between population centers and it’s in these spaces where you often find the wine regions.
Take for instance where I’m based in Priorat. The county officially has about 9,000 residents in total, but its location is part of this Mediterranean Magic wherein while the immediate strip of the coast holds oodles of people, you step back 25-40km and there’s no one. No one except the vines that is and the excellence of losing the coastal humidity paired with a rise in altitude, making for excellent viticulture.
These wine regions are however pockets that are, in a very Iberian fashion, quite removed from one another. Catalunya’s bookend to Priorat in terms of quality for me, is Empordà, way up by the French border. I’ve long-been keen on this region which is why I was happy to release a new report (along with Pla de Bages & Alella) as there are some excellent, yet often overlooked wines up there.
In the middle of the vast 225km space in between these Priorat & Empordà is Penedès and I fully admit that for some time I covered the region more or less out of obligation. The reason being that in Catalan wine, the reputation for many years was that of large and often uninteresting production, the exact kind of wine people are buying far less of now.
This has changed so, so much in the last few years with the upheaval in the sparkling wine sector and the movement of craft producers away from the dump trucks of bottles produced by DO Cava. But when it comes to the still wines produced not in the massive DO Catalunya (check out my YouTube videos) but in DO Penedès, things have evolved even more.
My latest report for DO Penedès has been in the making for all of 2025 and includes tasting notes for nearly 200 wines—the largest to date. Why so much attention? Simply put, there have been so many changes that have come to the region. Additionally, it’s now more uniform, cohesive and the level of quality has risen tremendously in the previous decade+ that I’ve been covering the wines. I highly recommend checking it out, or if in Barcelona at some point, pop out as they’re only a half hour away from the metropolis.
Suffice to say, Penedès is no longer simply a space in between, whether geographically or conceptually, but one more constellation in the galaxy of Catalan wine.
Drink well, be well.
-Miquel
(*) Free to read
The Featured Reports
Penedès 2025
So many changes and such a large tasting undertaken throughout all of the year. It’s been invigorating to see so much fruit come from so much labor and it’s worth reading about the differences in this crucial axis to Catalan wine.
Eastern Catalunya 2025
While the wines of Empordà, Alella, and Pla de Bages might not be well known, they all have their strengths which they play to a great extent and recent vintages have shaped up very well for these three regions.
And now this
There have been some fine new additions to the Viña Salceda project in Rioja, namely in their single-vineyard lines.
And of course, life isn’t interesting unless you take chances such as with this bottle of Merlot & Caladoc from the Southern Rhône.