Corpinnat, the collective brand of sparkling wines that emerged six years ago in Penedès, reviewed its 2023 results this Monday in an atmosphere of strong concern over the lack of rain, which has already caused the death of the first hectares of vineyards and placed the sector "in an unprecedented situation." If the drought persists from now until summer, winegrowers already predict that "many vineyards will have to be uprooted," which will cause "a landscape change" in Penedès and a sharp reduction in grape production volumes. In this regard, the twelve wineries that make up the Corpinnat association are asking for support from the Administration to be able to have water for irrigation and save the vineyards, something totally unusual, since in the region this type of crop has always been rainfed.
"Never before has there been so much concern about drought in Penedès. It is a real threat, but we also believe it can be an opportunity for the entire sector," said Corpinnat vice-president, Xavier Nadal, who called for "the support of the Administration at all levels to be able to irrigate and avoid having to uproot 30 and 100-year-old vineyards that generate a lot of value for the territory." Beyond the emergency measures for this year, Corpinnat, in the medium and long term, demands structural solutions to face climate change and new episodes of persistent drought like the current one. In this sense, they trust that the new Foix desalination plant, which will be built in Cubelles, will serve to guarantee support irrigation in the event of a new water crisis. Only then will "the environment of certainty and security that the winegrower needs to be able to replant the vineyards that now die" be created.
According to the president of Corpinnat, Ton Mata, any solution to address the water shortage must be "socially responsible, environmentally sustainable, and economically possible." He pointed out that vineyards do not need large quantities of water compared to fruit or corn crops, and insisted that this possibility of having support irrigation would only be used in cases of exceptional episodes like the current one. Penedès vineyards usually receive about 500 liters of rain per year, but in recent years this volume has been reduced to below 250 liters. "In Europe, the only way for the wine world to survive is to bet on value and not on volume. Penedès is a wine-growing territory that will disappear if it does not make this commitment to value that we demand from Corpinnat," Mata reflected.
Ton Mata: "Penedès is a wine-growing territory that will disappear if it does not make this commitment to value that we demand from Corpinnat"In this context of strong concern, Corpinnat has positively assessed the economic data for 2023, a year in which 6% fewer bottles have been sold, but the average retail selling price has increased by 9.8%, exceeding 20 euros for the first time, in line with the foundational objectives of the association to increase the value of Penedès sparkling wines and place them in the same league as champagne. Specifically, the average price of bottles leaving Corpinnat wineries was 11.59 euros, a figure that increases to 20.15 euros when it reaches the consumer. In 2022, the average price per bottle was 18.35 euros, in 2021 it was 17.35 euros, and in 2020 it was 17 euros. As will be recalled, the low and very low selling prices applied by some wineries were one of the main reasons that pushed Corpinnat members to abandon the DO Cava in 2018, considering that this brand harmed them by placing them in a market segment inferior to the quality of their products.
In total, in 2023, the twelve Corpinnat wineries marketed 2.28 million bottles, a 6.2% decrease. They attribute this decline to the "containment" that companies have applied in their commercial efforts to "be able to maintain stocks" in the face of reduced production caused by the drought and thus ensure that they will have product to serve their customers in the coming years, in which prices will inevitably continue to increase due to lower supply. In this sense, despite the decrease in the volume of bottles, the global turnover of the twelve wineries grew by 1.6%, totaling 26.42 million euros.
Since its birth in 2018, Corpinnat has doubled the number of associates. The latest winery to join the association is Bufadors ---a personal project of Recaredo's director, Ton Mata--- and it is expected that this year there will be new additions if the candidates who have applied to join manage to pass the audits and comply with all the parameters of the demanding production regulations that the association has self-imposed. The precursors of the European Union collective brand were Gramona, Llopart, Nadal, Recaredo, Sabaté i Coca and Torelló and, subsequently, Huguet de Can Feixes, Júlia Bernet, Más Candí, Descregut, Pardas and Bufadors have joined. In total, these companies, all family-owned, market 85 sparkling wine references, employ 272 workers, receive nearly 35,000 wine tourism visits per year, and own 647 hectares of vineyards.
In addition, they sign long-term purchase agreements with winegrowers who control another 521 hectares and with whom they agree on a guaranteed minimum purchase price. The average price per kilo of grapes purchased from these external winegrowers was 1.04 euros per kilo in the last harvest, above the minimum of 0.85 euros that had been set. In total, Corpinnat wineries received 5.87 million kilos, 50% from their own vineyards and 50% from independent winegrowers. The average yield of Corpinnat vineyards in 2023 was 4,770 kilos per hectare, a figure that could fall by half this year due to the drought.
63% of the bottles marketed by Corpinnat have a minimum aging period of between 30 and 60 months; 22% exceed 60 months – that is, 5 years – and 15% are aged between 18 and 30 months. Approximately, 60% of sales are made in Catalonia, 20% in the rest of Spain, and 19% in the international market. Specifically, the association's wineries export to 66 countries, led by Germany, Canada, Denmark, the United States, Japan, Norway, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Switzerland.