That Perfect Gift: Freixenet Cava + Chocolates

"El niño de Freixenet," iconic ad
for the company from the 1920s

So today, apparently, is the highest volume shopping day for Christmas in Spain. (Very naughty of all of you putting it off to the last minute!) I imagine most of you late shoppers are buying perfume or watches (this is at least what all the ads on TV seem to be for). But if you've manage to skip all the other ideas I've posted, and are still wondering what to give as a gift, I have a very simple and classy suggestion: a bottle of Freixenet's "cava" (a.k.a. Spanish sparkling wine) accompanied by a box of cava-friendly chocolates.

You may recall that I visited the Freixenet bodega this past September. It was fun, and the cava I tasted was delicious. But I've actually been a fan of Freixenet's for over a decade now. They've been exporting to the United States since the 1930s, and unlike the over-touted bottle of French champagne, a bottle of Freixenet in the States is usually only a bit more than $10, which is a very cheap option for such a fun and fancy drink. (You'll recognize the bottles… they're the dark black ones with the gold lettering on the label.)

Every year around the holidays Freixenet releases its annual widely anticipated "Felices Fiestas" ad campaign, so I'm taking this opportunity to throw my weight behind this Spanish product, to recommend it as a solid last-minute gift to buy for perhaps a party, a Christmas dinner, or (hopefully) a very romantic holiday evening with that special someone. (It is also the libation of choice for celebrating your winnings from "El Gordo".) Before continuing, a clarification. Freixenet is pronounced "Frey-sha-net". The "t" at the end _is_ _not_ silent… the word, after all, is Catalán, not French! 

Photo of the main entrance to the Freixenet Headquarters in Sant Sadurní d'Anoia

So, to continue, like all high-end alcoholic beverages, Freixenet has always had a advertising presence. One of its more iconic ads was the famous boy "el niño de Freixenet" seen in its commercial posters in the 1920, and which has become a kind of company logo. But starting in 1977, with a Xmas commercial featuring Liza Minnelli, the company ushered in a new era in its advertising, inviting famous people, often foreigners, to be the seasonal spokesperson for its cava. (There's good reason for this seasonal ad campaign: about 40% of all cava produced is sold around this time of year.) The basic formula behind Freixenet's Christmas campaign is to have some famous person, or to pair up two famous people, and then mount some visual spectacle around them where the color of cava features prominently. Also regularly featured are "las burbujas de Freixenet," the cava bubbles of the drink personified as showgirl-style dancers.

Spanish actress Maribel Verdú playfully dressed as "el niño de Freixenet" in the 1998 holiday ad

Rather than try and explain it in words, and to explain how it has come to be a routine feature of Spain's holiday seasonal landscape, here I list for you the stars featured over the past 35+ years, with the occasional annotation of more memorable ads, and when possible a link on their names leading you to the YouTube video of that year's ad (this blogger gives a nice historical summary of the campaign here):

1977: Liza Minnelli

1978: Club de Natació Kallipolis de Barcelona, as "las burbujas de Freixenet"

1979: Burbujas de Freixenet

1980: Lorenzo Santamaría, Bárbara Rey, Sidney Rome, and Margaux

1981: Gene Kelly [with the "burbujas de Freixenet" depicted as the rain from "Singing in the Rain"]

1982: Norma Duval, Cheryl Ladd and Anne Margret

1983: Shirley McLaine & Miguel Bosé

1984: Plácido Domingo & Ana Obregón

1985: Raquel Welch

1986: Jacqueline Bisset and Alexander Godunov [Click here to see a "making of" clip on it]

1987: Victoria Principal [then famous for her role in the TV series "Dallas"]

1988: Josep Carreras

1989: Paul Newman

1990: Inés Sastre and "Superman" Christopher Reeve

1991: Don Johnson [then famous for his role in "Miami Vice"]

1992: Antonio Banderas and Sharon Stone

1993: Kim Basinger 

The Freixenet ads are also fodder for cultural commentary. In this video you can see
 Martes y Trece parodying the 1993 Kim Basinger Freixenet Christmas ad.

1994: The stars of "Belle Époque" [which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film the year before]

1995: Andy MacDowell and Nacho Duato

1996: Juncal Rivero, Sofía Mazagatos, Mar Flores, Anthony Quinn and son Lorenzo Quinn

1997: Meg Ryan

1998: Alejandro Sanz, Maribel Verdú, Laura Ponte and Ainhoa Arteta [Maribel Verdú - dresses like the famous "niño de Freixenet" logo image]

1999: Montserrat Caballé, Joaquín de Luz, Tamara Rojo, Carlos Nuñez, Cristina Pato, Ketama, Estrella Morente, Íngrid Rubio y Lorena Bernal

2000: Lorin Maazel and "las Burbujas de Freixenet"

2001: Penélope Cruz

2002: Pilar López de Ayala [the year she won acclaim as "Juana la Loca"]

2003: Paz Vega

2004: Nieves Álvarez and Pierce Brosnan [spoofing his James Bond image]

2005: Gabino Diego and Demi Moore

2006: Gwyneth Paltrow & Ángel Corella

2007: Martin Scorsese spoof directs a short film, that is actually a commercial for the drink 

2008: Spain's Synchronized Swimming National Team

I'm sure part of the popularity of this year's ad was the national pride in Spain's amazing
 Synchronized Swimming Team, a regular medal winner in European and Olympic contests.

2009: The 2008 video repeated "por la crisis" (because of the crisis)... and because of its popularity

2010: Shakira [This makes sense given her World Cup hit song, the year Spain wins]

2011: Sara Baras and José Carlos Martínez [flamenco dancing]

Don't they just make you want to go out and buy a bottle of cava? In a way, by choosing famous people at the height of their fame, Freixenet has created a kind of yearbook of Christmas past, capturing the spirit of each year by giving the moment in time a face to remember it by. (And there are different types of cava for different tastes. This blog gives a nice explanation of the label in Spanish.)

Well, in addition to cava I recommend you get some chocolates. On our trip to Penedés, the very classy B&B we stayed at in Capellades gave us a complementary bottle of cava with a box of white chocolates that were an excellent accompaniment to the drink: Crackania from the Catalan company Casanella Xocolaters. I don't know that you can find these in the States, but you can here in Spain and I highly recommend them. They have "polpa de raïm" (grape pulp) in them, which is naturally the perfect flavoring for a sweet companion to sparkling wine. But in the US you can also order "Rabitos" through LaTienda.com, which is a similar idea (though with figs)… a sweet extra to blend with that bubbly fun of cava.

The perfect cava accompaniment: "polpa de raïm" + coconut shavings + white chocolate

You're certain to have a Merry Christmas with this combination!


Postscript: Oh dear! After writing this entry and posting it to go up later in the week, I discovered that Sangria Sol y Siesta had already written on this topic. Needless redundancy. Though as is always the case, in these situations, I can take some comfort from the fact that our approaches to the subject are fairly different.

Penedés: Wine Country

Spain's wines are becoming increasingly popular in the United States, and for good reason. Spain produces some excellent wines, and unlike France and Italy, whose international reputations and image marketing have led to sticker shock and high pricing of its bottles abroad, Spain exports wines at comparatively low prices that make drinking them not only gustatorily satisfactory but also quite financially appealing. Indeed, in Spain wine is consumed as an ordinary accompaniment to one's meal, not a luxury item, and is thus priced very inexpensively.

(Evidence by way of personal anecdote: when I once tried to buy my in-laws a "nice and expensive" bottle of wine, my mother-in-law fussed about not being excessive in purchasing a 10€ bottle, and insisted that splurging on a 5€ bottle was more than fancy enough. For routine drinking, one need not spend more than 3€ here in Spain for a good wine.)

While there are wine regions all throughout Spain, the two most reputed wine regions are La Rioja and Penedés. Between the two, La Rioja is the region with the longest tradition and greatest fame, but the two regions have equal status here in part because of their specialization in product. La Rioja produces mostly "tinto," red wines, while Penedés is reknowned for its "vino blanco" (white wine) and "cava," Spain's version of sparkling wine (or what in France is called champagne).

Spain's many wine producing regions, though La Rioja and Penedés are among its most prestigious

There is too much to say about wine culture in Spain, about production, variation, and its mark on the culture and landscape of the country (the so-called "cava wars," "denominación de origen" labeling rules, whether it is an alcoholic drink or really an accompaniment to one's meal). I promise to return to these topics in future blog entries. Here I just want to focus on Penedés, having recently spent a weekend there touring the vineyards. Penedés is a comarca, a county, of Cataluña located along the coast to the southwest of Barcelona. It is an ancient viticulture region, with vines found in the area dating back to before the 4th Century BC brought there by the Greeks, though the region's importance in wine markets really got going in the 6th Century AD and onward.

Question: What are the three grape varietals used in cava?
Answer: Parellada, Macabeu, and Xarel•lo.

Starting in the late 19th Century, producers in the region started specializing in "cava." The shift was partly a response to the phylloxera plague, a pest which ruined grape vines all across Europe and nearly caused Europe's wine production to collapse. What is cava? I have for a long time said that cava is more or less exactly the same as champagne, except that the French won't let anyone else call it that. However, I was mistaken. Cava is made from three white grape varieties common to the Penedés region: Parellada, Macabeu, and Xarel•lo. These are not the same as the grapes used in champagne (which for those of you curious are generally the white Chardonay and the the red wine grapes of Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier). (See here for a more in depth blog entry on grape cultivation in Spain. Interesting fact: 94% of grapes cultivated in Spain are destined for wine production, only 6% for table consumption.) So my new take on this is that cava is _better_ than champagne, and in the U.S. you can usually find bottles of it for cheaper. Unlike wine, cava has two fermentation steps, the first fermentation is done with all wines to convert the sugars into alcohol via yeast, but then a second partial fermentation is done, after more sugar liqueur is added, which results in the bubbly final product. What is most interesting about this is that the bottle sold is the same bottle in which this second fermentation takes place!

"Vendimia" season in Penedés. Trucks line up at the Segura Viudas Cava Bodega
in mid September to deliver grapes from nearby vineyards.

September is when the "vendimia" (grape harvesting) takes place, and was thus a very fun time to visit the region and do some enotourism. You could see trucks bringing grapes from the fields to the "bodegas," wine cellars, where producers bottle next year's wine or cava. The two wine producing capitals of the region are Vilafranca and Sant Sadurní d'Anoia. Vilafranca del Penedés is renowned for its culinary excellence (and also its Castellers, or the local association dedicated to staging human towers, surely the subject of a later entry). While there, I highly recommend dining at Cal Ton, widely considered to be the finest or one of the finest restaurants in the city. The town also has a "ruta modernista" (Modernist route) with some interesting buildings; interesting, though not quite the same level as you'd find in Barcelona. More impressive for vino-philes is the "Vinseum," the Penedés Wine Museum. It has an innovative museum format, with interactive displays and poses questions rather than answers, though you will certainly leave it knowing much more about the region's wine, culture and history than when you entered. Very importantly, the museum gives you a wine tasting with your entrance fee.

The more interactive display style of the Vinseum in Vilafranca del Penedés

Recognize this bottle?
That's because Freixenet produces
90 million bottles a year, exporting
a large percent to the United States

Sant Sadurní d'Anoia also has wines, but its name is more synonymous with cava. Most of the famous cavas are located here. The two biggest producers Cordoníu and Freixenet, which Americans might recognize since they export large amounts to the States, offer great tours. Freixenet's tour focuses more on the production and its massive bodegas, whereas Cordoníu's tour highlights its modernist buildings and beautiful layout. Again, both tours end with a cava tasting. I recommend you combine a tour of at least one of these large producers with a visit to one of the many smaller wine or cava producers in the area, since they will give you a better tour of the actual fields and vineyards to compliment the big producers' focus on fermentation and bottling. One (of many) options is Segura Viudas, one of my personal cava favorites and which offers a more intimate tour. While a member of the "Freixenet group," it produces its own distinct wines and cavas and is located about 10 minutes outside of Sant Sadurní d'Anoia along a road that winds through breathtaking views of vineyards and a very distinctive Penedés landscape.

The Segura Viudas bodega and the rolling hills and vineyards of Penedés, wine country