Morning of the Sitges Cava Tour!
I had to wake up nice and early to start the tour de drink, I arrived at the Julia Travel office in Universitat at 8.30am, parked outside was their completely recognizable set of Julia Travel tour buses, a familiar sight around the city, they like you to be around 15 minutes early, understandably, the actual tour bus leaves at 8.45, it was spacey, air-conditioned and comfortable, there was only about 8 other people on the tour, all lovely and relaxed, it was quite a personal tour, just a small group of us going to the cava freixenet cellars and everyone was chatty.
The drive was less than an hour, the tour guide was helpful and friendly, and she was from the south of Spain, on our way she talked through the history of all the cities’ monuments as we drove through Plaça Catalunya and past Tibidabo.
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The Freixenet Tour de Cava
We arrived at the Freixenet Cava house, it’s impressive, giant iron gates, a fountain with an old classic car parked outside. We walk in and are greeted by our house guide from Tenessee, who is also completely fluent in Spanish, very good at her job, the tour was relaxed, we were casually walked through the cellars, (It can get quite chilly, so bring a cardi) we were talked through the process of fermentation, the soils they use, the corks, the bottles, the vineyards, their were a few short audiovisual presentations on the making of cava, also giving a bit of background on the family natured history of the business. You would usually get a train ride back out of the cellars; however it’d been raining that day, so we walked instead.
The cellars were built in 1922, and we were even shown the fungus formations within the arched ceilings of the cellar, which in total run a distance of 20km.
The tasting room was next, a personal peak for me! We were able to taste the different Cavas from the Freixenet Range; the cava we tasted was particularly fruity. The history of Freixenet along with each of its’ infamous cavas were explained to us in elaborate detail, the tour was very well done, and if you appreciate cava, you will love it, I learnt a lot.
We were then taken to the gift shop, “Dolores Ferrer” I’m not such a big fan of gift shops, however this was well worth the stop, you cannot leave without purchasing a bottle of cava, if only a small one.
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A Trip to Sitges
So after the Freixenet Cava house, we moved back on to the tour bus and were taken to Sitges, the meeting point was the tourist office and we had about an hour of free time to walk around the city, it was beautiful, I spent most of my time on the beach, walking around the famous church. The city is vibrant and relaxing at the same time, village type, white buildings, never ending winding and bending streets, the general atmosphere is friendly, artistic and open. There are lots of restaurants to eat at. One hour passed and back on the tour bus, we took a different route back to Barcelona and were talked through the harbour and Plaça España.
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Throughout the tour, the house guides were extremely helpful and approachable, there were plenty of opportunities to take photos and videos, the tour guide was very open and more then willing to answer any further questions, they seemed genuinely enthusiastic about the Cava tour and keeping us all informed.
I would recommend this experience to those who might not usually think about this kind of tour, as well as those who would. If anyone has any further questions or if you’ve experienced a similar Cava tour and would like to share your experience?
Feel free to comment.