Overview
The easiest weekend on the whole list to actually get to. Barcelona has more flights from London than any other city in Europe, and from Barcelona Sants a suburban train runs out to Sant Sadurní d'Anoia in about 45 minutes and Vilafranca del Penedès in an hour — through the vineyards, for the price of a coffee.
What you find at the end of it is the engine room of Spanish sparkling wine. Sant Sadurní sits on top of kilometres of cellars; Codorníu alone stores millions of bottles under the hill, in tunnels you tour on a little train. Above ground it is rolling vineyard country, the serrated grey wall of Montserrat on the northern horizon, and lanes quiet enough to ride all day.
And there is a real festival in the right week. Escumostra — the show everyone still calls Cavatast — takes over the streets of Sant Sadurní on 2–4 October 2026 for its thirtieth edition: growers' stands, a tasting glass on a lanyard, food from the local kitchens. It was renamed and widened this year to take in Corpinnat and Clàssic Penedès alongside cava, which tells you something about how contested the word 'cava' has become here.
The timing works for the other reason too: the sparkling harvest happens in August, so by October the presses are washed down and the growers have time to talk.
Getting There
| Outbound | Friday 2 October — Gatwick, Heathrow, Luton or Stansted to Barcelona (BCN), about 2h05. Dozens of flights a day on easyJet, BA, Vueling and Ryanair; from around £40 one way |
| Return | Monday 5 October — evening departure, from around £45. The sheer frequency means a missed flight is an inconvenience rather than a disaster |
| Airport to base | Train or Aerobús to Barcelona Sants (~25 min), then Rodalies line R4 to Sant Sadurní (~45 min) or Vilafranca (~55 min). Around €6 all in |
| Or skip the city | A taxi from the airport straight to Vilafranca takes about 45 minutes and costs roughly €90 for the car — worth it split three or four ways with luggage |
| Bikes | Hire in Vilafranca or Sant Sadurní; several operators run e-bike vineyard tours and will rent bikes for the weekend. Bikes travel free on Rodalies trains outside the weekday peak |
Day by Day
Friday 2 October — Arrive & the festival opens
- Morning flight, train out through the vineyards, bags down by mid-afternoon.
- Escumostra opens in Sant Sadurní: buy the glass and the strip of tickets, then work along the growers' stands in the street.
- This is the unpretentious end of sparkling wine — plastic tables, long queues for the good stands, families out until late.
- Dinner from the food stalls, or a table at one of the celler restaurants in town.
Saturday 3 October — Cava country by bike
- Out on the lanes between Sant Sadurní and the Anoia valley: vines, farmhouses, and Montserrat's sawtooth ridge to the north.
- Codorníu first — Puig i Cadafalch's modernista cellars are a cathedral in brick and tile, and the tour rides a little train through kilometres of tunnels. Bookable online, and the most spectacular thing in the region.
- Afternoon at Recaredo or Llopart for the opposite experience: small, organic, hand-disgorged, long-aged Corpinnat from estate fruit. Book weeks ahead — Recaredo in particular is small and popular.
- About 35km of gentle rolling. Back to Sant Sadurní for the second night of the festival.
Sunday 4 October — Vilafranca and the Torres side
- South through the vines to Pacs del Penedès for Familia Torres: a large, well-run visitor operation with its own train through the vineyard, and a serious story about replanting forgotten Catalan varieties rescued from old walls and abandoned plots.
- Into Vilafranca for lunch and the VINSEUM, the wine museum in the old royal palace — better than it sounds, and a good hour out of the sun.
- Vilafranca is the home town of the castellers, the human-tower colles who are the best in Catalonia; the great displays belong to the August festa major, but the training halls are part of the town's furniture.
- About 30km. Last dinner in Vilafranca.
Monday 5 October — Barcelona, then home
- Train back in the morning and use the city: the Boqueria, the Sagrada Família, or an hour on the beach at Barceloneta.
- Airport is 25 minutes from Sants. Evening flight home.
Festivals & Local Events
Escumostra (formerly Cavatast), Sant Sadurní — 2–4 October 2026
The thirtieth edition, and the reason to take the first weekend of October. Renamed this year and opened out beyond cava to Corpinnat, Clàssic Penedès and other sparkling wines: guided tastings, cellar visits, food stands and music through the streets of the town.
Most — Penedès international wine and cava film festival, 5–15 November 2026
Vilafranca hosts its fifteenth edition, followed by a Priorat leg from 25–29 November. Documentaries and features about wine, in a town that lives on it. A month after our weekend.
Harvest festivals, September to November
Villages across the Penedès run their own festes de la verema through the autumn — treading, blessing, eating. Ask the tourist office in Vilafranca which are on.
Festa Major de Vilafranca — 29 August to 1 September
The castellers at full stretch, building human towers nine levels high in the square. Nothing like it, and completely the wrong month for us.
Sant Martí — 11 November
New wine, roast chestnuts and the traditional Catalan excuse for a long lunch.
The Region in Brief
A little history
Vines have grown here since the Phoenicians, and the Romans shipped Penedès wine from the port at Tarragona. The modern story starts with disaster: phylloxera arrived in 1887 and destroyed the vineyards, which were replanted largely to white varieties — and those varieties turned out to suit sparkling wine. Josep Raventós of Codorníu had already made the first bottle-fermented Catalan sparkling in 1872 after a study trip to Champagne, and the replanting gave the new style an entire region to grow in. The modernista architects who built Barcelona's Eixample built the cellars too. In 2019 nine of the best small growers walked out of the DO Cava altogether, exasperated by a designation that covered everything from long-aged estate wine to supermarket fizz, and founded Corpinnat: organic, hand-picked, estate-grown, minimum eighteen months on the lees. The argument is still going, and it is worth understanding before you order.
October weather
Reliably kind: 12–23°C in early October, dry, with a sea breeze in the afternoon and enough warmth in the evening to eat outside. One of the two or three most weather-proof options on the list.
The wines
The sparkling trio is Xarel·lo, Macabeu and Parellada — Xarel·lo the backbone, waxy and firm, and increasingly bottled on its own as a still white worth taking seriously. Long-aged Corpinnat and Cava de Paratge Qualificat are the top of the tree; ordinary supermarket cava is a different drink and the growers here will happily tell you so. There are good reds too, from Tempranillo (Ull de Llebre), Garnacha and, at Torres, Cabernet — Mas La Plana beat the first growths in a famous 1979 Paris tasting.
The food
Pa amb tomàquet with everything, botifarra and grilled vegetables, esqueixada of salt cod, arròs and fideuà on Sundays, and mel i mató to finish. The regional speciality is xató — escarole, salt cod, anchovy and a romesco-like almond sauce — though the xatonada season proper starts in November, a few weeks after us. Long lunches are the norm; plan the riding around them rather than the other way round.
Where to Stay
Hotel Mastinell
A wine hotel on the edge of town, architecturally striking — the roof is built to look like stacked bottles — with its own cellar and restaurant.
Sol i Vi
Comfortable, unfussy, surrounded by vines and well placed for riding to either town.
Cal Blay / town hotels, Sant Sadurní
Small and simple, but during Escumostra being able to walk home matters more than thread count. Book early for the festival weekend.
The Wineries
Codorníu
Puig i Cadafalch's 1895 cellars are a listed national monument, and the tour runs by train through kilometres of underground galleries. The most visually extraordinary winery visit on this whole list, bookable online in English.
Recaredo
Everything the big houses are not: estate fruit only, biodynamic, aged for years, every bottle disgorged by hand without freezing. Small, serious and much in demand — book several weeks ahead.
Llopart
Family estate documented back to 1385, up on a ridge with Montserrat in front of you and the Mediterranean behind. Corpinnat, and one of the easier top-tier visits to book.
Familia Torres
A large visitor operation with a vineyard train and a genuinely interesting story: the family has spent decades hunting down and replanting Catalan varieties that phylloxera and fashion had wiped out.
Freixenet
The other giant, directly opposite the railway station, with a straightforward cellar tour if you want the industrial-scale counterpoint to Recaredo.
Eat & Drink
| Friday | Festival stands at Escumostra, Sant Sadurní |
| Saturday | Long lunch at a celler restaurant between visits |
| Sunday | Vilafranca — market cooking and a bottle of still Xarel·lo |
| Monday | Barcelona — the Boqueria, or vermouth and tapas before the flight |
Useful Links
- Penedès Turisme — the official regional tourist board — cellars, events, routes
- Escumostra / Cavatast — the town hall page for the festival, with dates, tickets and programme
- Corpinnat — the breakaway growers' association — who they are and why they left
- DO Penedès — the appellation: varieties, producers and the still wines
- Rodalies de Catalunya — line R4 timetables from Barcelona Sants to Sant Sadurní and Vilafranca
Practical Notes
- Book Recaredo first and build the weekend around it. It is small, it sells out, and it is the visit that will stay with you.
- Escumostra means beds go early. Sant Sadurní is a small town with a big festival; if you cannot get a room there, Vilafranca is ten minutes by train.
- Cava, Corpinnat and Clàssic Penedès are three different things — and asking a grower to explain the difference is the single best conversation-opener in the region.
- Bikes travel free on the R4 outside the weekday rush, which turns any ride into a one-way ride.
- Sunday is quiet in Spain — plan the Torres visit and lunch in advance rather than turning up hopefully.
- Lunch is late and long. Nobody eats before two, and no cellar will be pleased to see you at three.