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Cava
Juvé y Camps—long one of Spain’s most respected names in sparkling wine—announced on April 1 that it was leaving the DO Cava to join Corpinnat, the Penedès-based collective committed to producing sparkling wines with a clearer sense of place and a higher bar for quality.
Not exactly a quiet move. And very symbolic.
I’ll admit, when I was buying wines for hotels and restaurants I was guilty of thinking that Cava—the traditionally made sparkling wine from Spain—was, by and large, low quality. At the LCBO, you can buy the two most common brands, Freixenet and Codorníu, for less than $20. It was hard to justify the higher price of good quality cava when many patrons only reach for it when topping up their orange juice.
Considering how traditionally made sparkling wine is produced—how labour-intensive it is, and how much time it takes to create something worth drinking—it was hard to believe that high quality ever aligned with low price point.
And I wasn’t the only one.
For a long time, about 15 years, the tension around DO Cava wasn’t exactly subtle. You had an appellation rooted in Catalunya, yet sprawling across the map—down into Extremadura, over to Rioja, and out toward Valencia. On paper, that’s scale. In the glass, it’s a bit more complicated.
The real sticking point? Producers couldn’t meaningfully say where their wine actually came from. No finer detail, no sense of place— just “Cava.” And when the bar to entry isn’t especially high, that name starts to stretch pretty thin.
Meanwhile, in Penedès, where many of Spain’s most serious sparkling wines are born, producers were asking a fair question: how do you stand apart when you’re sharing a label with something designed to be opened on a Tuesday night without much thought?
They pushed for change. For years. Nothing moved.
So, they moved instead.
First came Classic Penedès in 2014. Then Corpinnat in 2019. These appellations weren’t vanity projects— they were line-in-the-sand moments. A way of saying: this is who we are, this is where we’re from, and this is the standard.
By the time the Cava DO finally responded in 2021— introducing subzones and tightening quality rules—it felt a little late to the party. The house had already started to empty.
And if producers like Juvé y Camps are anything to go by, the pull of something like Corpinnat isn’t just philosophical— it’s practical.
Stricter standards, clearer identity, and, perhaps most importantly, a sense that the name on the label actually means something again.
Closer to home, there are amazing sparkling wines right here in our own backyard. Properly made traditional method bubbles, where the second fermentation, the one that creates the bubbles, happens in the very bottle you’re drinking from. Wines where quality is top of mind and a sense of place is easy to taste.
You can find them in a few wineries in the County, Niagara, BC and for the in-the-know-drinkers, Nova Scotia.
Save the entry-level Cava for your Sunday morning mimosas. Drink Canadian the rest of the week.
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