Barcelona is fortunate to be able to offer its citizens and visitors the possibility of experiencing an exceptional visual pleasure: contemplating the landscape formed by the vineyards. In just over half an hour by car, you can reach the Penedès region, which these days offers a true spring spectacle thanks to the energetic green that sprouts from the leaves of the vines. Although the region is, unfortunately, very fragmented by the excess of infrastructures, there are many idyllic places that can be contemplated thanks to the effort and dedication of the winegrowers who, generation after generation, fight to preserve this heritage.
The best way to discover these landscapes is by visiting any of the wineries in the region, which open their doors to visitors not only to promote and sell their wines, but also to show and highlight the value of this environment. Now that the restrictions imposed by the pandemic are being left behind, the Penedès wineries have restarted their wine tourism activity and present novelties such as La Barbequiú Bubbles & Food, the new outdoor gastronomic space created by Torelló Viticultors.
It is a very spacious terrace surrounded by vineyards located on the historic Can Martí estate, in the municipality of Gelida, which the Torelló family has cultivated for more than 600 years. The owner of the winery, Ernestina Torelló, and her two children, Paco and Toni de la Rosa Torelló, wanted to launch this project aware that "wine tourism was a pending subject for the winery." Now they will have a space to organize gastronomic evenings and all kinds of activities that contribute to achieving one of the main objectives of the wineries that are part of the new collective brand of quality sparkling wines Corpinnat: to make known the territory of origin of their wines.
To inaugurate La Barbequiú, Torelló has scheduled for Saturdays 5, 12, 19 and 26 of this coming month of June a program of visits with barbecue lunch included. "We love to receive people, we love gastronomy and we love music," explains Toni de la Rosa, excited about this initiative, which will continue during the month of July thanks to Torelló's active participation in the first Corpinnat Gastronomic Festival, which will be held between June 15 and August 15 in the eleven wineries that are part of the association.
Visitors who sign up for the Torelló barbecues will be able to enjoy a visit to the winery and then eat, at the foot of the vineyard and with music spun by a DJ, a set menu that includes salad; skewers with dates, bacon and pineapple; quail eggs with sobrasada; butifarra with Santa Pau beans; chistorra, beef entraña and carquinyolis. With a maximum capacity of 40 people, the price of the Barbequiú experience will be 55 euros with a bottle of Corpinnat Torelló every two people.
Starting on June 29 and throughout July, the winery will host nine of the dinners planned for the Corpinnat Gastronomic Festival, which has been organized with the aim of promoting the wineries and also helping to reactivate the hospitality sector, key for the companies that are part of the collective brand. Specifically, in Torelló, dinners prepared by the chefs of the restaurants Passadís del Pep (Barcelona), Sidreria La Muralla (Cambrils), Kauai (Gavà), Mordisco (Barcelona), Syrah (Girona), Botafumeiro (Barcelona), Bar Pinotxo La Boqueria (Barcelona), Cal Ticus (Sant Sadurní) and Sheyton by David Molina (Lleida) will be offered.
With these four barbecues and nine dinners, Torelló wants to respond to the growing demand for outdoor activities and boost its wine tourism aspect. If the experience works, new proposals will be prepared for this space for the next harvest.
Torelló Viticultors thus leaves behind a 2020 that has also been dramatic for the wine sector, greatly affected by the closure of the hospitality industry. The winery has been able to partially mitigate this impact thanks to its ability to continue exporting and the increase in sales in supermarkets, where it has gained new customers such as the Ametller Origen chain. In total, the year closed with a 20% decrease in sales. Before the pandemic, the family business commercialized about 500,000 bottles, of which approximately 310,000 are Corpinnat sparkling wine and the rest are still wine bottles.
This production volume cannot be maintained with the wine obtained from this last 2020 harvest, which has been fateful due to the impact of the mildew fungus, which reduced the volume of harvested grape kilos by 70%. It should be noted that 100% of the winery's vineyards are organic and, therefore, are among the most affected in Penedès, as this plague could not be combated with chemical products.