Gramona winery
Buy wines from Gramona winery
Gramona is one of the pioneers of sparkling wine production in the Alt Penedès and is now one of the best houses in the region, known for its particularly long bottle ageing. For a long time, the wines from Gramona were known as „Cava“. However, like many other leading sparkling wine producers in the region, Gramona has opted for the name „Corpinnat“. The „Cava“ has been left to the large producers, some of which are already industrialised.
Gramona goes back to Josep Batlle, the great-great-grandfather of the current family members. He worked as a winemaker and viticulturist, as one would say today, for a family in La Plana in the Anoia river valley.
Josep's son Pau began supplying French sparkling wine producers with base wine at a time when phylloxera was raging in France, earning so much money that he was eventually able to purchase the vineyards his father had cultivated in 1881 and open his own winery, Celler Batlle. Pau's daughter Pilar married the son of the president of the Barcelona Tavern Guild, Bartolomé Gramona, after whom the cava house was named. The real boom came in 1945, when Bartomeu and Josep Lluis Gramona began to age their sparkling wines for a particularly long time. The iconic „Gramona III Lustros“ was bottled for the first time in 1951 and launched on the market in 1961. In 2021, the Gramona family celebrated its first century as a sparkling wine producer and its 140th anniversary as winegrowers.
Gramona's vineyards are located in the so-called „Alt Penedes“, in the heights around Sant Sarduní d'Anoia, where the soils are mainly clay and limestone, with some alluvial soils near the river Anoia and slate soils near Montserrat. The family focussed on organic cultivation early on and increasingly intensified this in the direction of biodynamics. The winery has been Demeter® certified since 2014. As is the ideal in biodynamics, Gramona has established a circular economy with its own animals and compost.
In the cellar, work is carried out in the same way as it used to be in the Cava region and also in Champagne. Back then, bottle fermentation was carried out under cork. Today, crown corks are used almost everywhere. Not so at Gramona. At least not for the longer matured sparkling wines. Everything that has been in the cellar for more than five years continues to mature under cork, is shaken by hand and disgorged warm by hand. The dosage is zero or very low.
Together with Recaredo, Gramona was the founder of „Corpinnat“ because they no longer wanted to comply with the overly vague guidelines of the DO Cava. the group was founded in 2015 and recognised as a European brand in 2017. There are now eleven members. They have all committed to certified organic cultivation and a minimum bottle ageing period of 17 months. Gramona is also one of the „Wineries for climate protection“ and is certified sustainable. Most of Gramona's Corpinnats are aged on the lees for at least five years. The current „Lustros“ spent nine years on the lees, the „Cellar Batlle“ eleven years and the „Enoteca“ even 13 years.
© Photos: Winery Gramona
