Cava at Vallformosa

Daniel Schwedheim showing cava bottle

On the final day of winery tours in Spain we went to Vallformosa in Vilafranca del Penedès outside of Barcelona. We had lunch with Oriol Domenech Vidal, head winemaker, and Daniel Schwedhelm, Business Director. We tasted several cavas and ate a fantastic lunch.

Vallformosa is a owned and run by fifth generation of the Domenech family. The winery is next to the family’s house and surrounded by vineyards. The winery has a wine museum and a huge cava production facility.

After lunch we toured the winery. We saw trucks full of grapes getting dumped into the stem separators built into the floors. We toured a gigantic riddling room where the cava bottles are rotated upside down to collect all the yeast at the in the neck of the bottle. The bottling line took uncapped the cava bottles, pulled out the yeast that collected in the neck, corked the bottle, and put labels on the front.