Foto: CRC	Ampliar

The cava harvest season has picked 300 million kilograms of grapes this year, 18 million less than the previous year. The grapes will be used to obtain 185 million litres of juice that will be used as cuvée grade according to the Regulatory Board data.


Cava harvest ended this week, being shoter than usual. Spring high temperatures involved an early winter stop and both the vegetative period and the ripening grape process came early about ten days regarding the historic average.

The harvest started on 2nd August and depending on grape varieties, the time employed to collect the grapes has been brought foward a week. "The characteristics of this year's harvest were the excellent health of grapes and the absence of weather events during haverst time, so it was easier to do the work", stated Gustavo García Guillamet, chairman of the Cava Regulatory Board. He added that "grapes gave suitable analityc parameters for an exceptional cuvée".

Besides, ripening process of different grape varieties have been tidy and harvest time was made meticulously to respect grape's acidity and alcoholic strenght. These good practises in the selection of grapes have allowed to obtain really optimum musts. "We should highlight that cava wines are obtained from the mix of different grape varieties which bring their own characteristics that strenghthen and complement the properties of the other grapes", explained García Guillamet. "This allow us to discover new features in cavas every year", he added.

The Cava Regulatory Board has 31,858 hectares of producing vineyards. The harvest started early in August with the collection of chardonnay and pinot noir varieties, followed by main grapes such as macabeo, xarel.lo and parellada.

Cava and appetizer in Madrid and Barcelona

In order to celebrate the end of the harvest season, the Cava Regulatory Board will held on Saturday 8th October the ninth edition of the Cava Harvest Party at Madrid's Plaza Mayor. Also this year, for the first time ever, the harvest will be celebrated in Barcelona's Born neighborhood, just besides Santa María del Mar cathedral. During the day, thousands of citizens of Madrid and Barcelona would enjoy a cup of cava and an typical appetizer.

In addition, the Cava Regulatory Board will place a photocall with a cava bottle and all those who photograph themselves at the photocall will receive a cava cup and an appetizer for free, and will be able to download the photo from the Cava Regulatory Board site in Facebook (www.facebook.com/crcava).