Another winery leaves the Cava DO and enters Corpinnat: Mas de la Basserola

Saint Sadurní of AnoiaThe Vives family's Mas de la Basserola winery is leaving the Cava DO and joining the Corpinnat brand. The announcement of this fifteenth addition was made today, allowing the winery's owner, Guillem Vives (Pla de Manlleu, 1993), to become a member for the first time at the event held at the Recaredo winery in Sant Sadurní d'Anoia. Corpinnat hosted the delegation from the French Wine Academy, which arrived in Catalonia on Wednesday night and is touring the country.

Vives, who explains that his entire family is dedicated to the winery, explains that the decision to abandon the Cava DO was made a year and a half ago for many reasons, all important. One is the price at which cava is exported, which distributors were marking up at three euros. Another is the lack of prestige that, in the words of Guillermo Vives, "cava enjoys in countries like Denmark, Japan, England, or the Netherlands." And this is so, the winery's co-owner continues, because "the Cava DO has not fought to dignify sparkling wine." There is yet another argument that Vives puts forward, and that is the fact that with the Cava DO "it is difficult to identify its origin, although in recent times they have certainly begun to take steps to better define it."

A year and a half without a brand

For all these reasons, the Vives family announced to the Cava DO that they wanted to leave, and for a year and a half they've been making sparkling wines, writing only the winery's name on the labels: Mas de la Basserola, which refers to a stream where the estate is located and where ponds form when it rains. However, there came a day when they realized that their method of making sparkling wines would allow them to join the Corpinnat brand. "So we asked for a meeting, telling them we would like to join as a winery, because we harvest the grapes by hand, we practice organic farming, we make the base wine, and we produce the entire process in-house," says Guillem Vives. When Corpinnat receives the request, it begins another audit—its own—to verify that the winery meets all the requirements they demand. And so it has been until today, just as Easter is about to begin, when Corpinnat has revealed what it had announced months ago: that by spring, up to fifteen wineries would be expanding the brand.

"We're very happy," said Guillem Vives. "And we still haven't received the labels, where we'll be able to say we're Corpinnat, because we won't have them until next week." However, in front of representatives from the French Wine Academy, he offered glasses of his wines: three sparkling wines and two still wines, one white and one red.