After having several additions available online, Wine Pleasures has just released their 2016 edition of 50 Great Cavas in a beautiful color version spanning 154 pages.
What is 50 Great Cavas? It was a project started by Anthony Swift, proprietor of WinePleasures.com as a project for their interns who were assisting them with their tastings, tours, and other wine projects. Anthony and his team solicited cavamakers part of DO Cava to submit their sparklings to a blind tasting, with the top 50 in two categories of either outstanding or highly recommended.
What the book has become is not just a rating guide for 50 cavas, but also a how-to on drinking cava, history of the sublime sparkles, and in-depth features on the wineries included in the top 50. The team which evaluated this year’s addition included Anthony himself, plus Juan Manuel Gonzalvo (buyer for Uvinum and wine consultant for several wineries), and the husband/wife duo of Kathy and Terry Sullivan (proprietors of winetrailtraveler.com).
I’ve been a fan of the magazine since its 2013 edition, which we profiled and posted when we first started this website. Now that it has gone into a print edition, 50 Great Cavas is not only a aesthetically pleasing bound magazine (suitable for your coffee table collection), but a deeply informative guide to some of the top cavas and cava houses in the region.
Anthony is a busy man these days, not only with the evolution of the 50 Great Cavas project, but also with his tour/tasting business, and his workshops which include his “Buyer meets Cellar” series where distributors and shops can meet boutique wineries from France, Portugal, and Spain. He also is the force behind the International Wine Tourism Conference, which is back in Barcelona this coming April.
So what were the top rated cavas in the magazine? You’ll just have to buy a copy for yourself to see, but this year’s edition does include some of my favourites including Pares Balta, Llopart, and Celler Vell. If you’d like to buy a copy of this year’s edition, you can find it online here: http://www.winepleasures.com/50-great-cavas/ and you can also find it in many of the fine wine shops in the region.