“Any vacation requests from the 11th of August onward are being denied.” Such was the ominous beginning to an interview with a winery owner in DO Terra Alta for a forthcoming report.
But this is the new reality in that while there has been abundant rain in 2025, harvests still hold the potential to arrive many weeks earlier than the did just a decade or two ago. Thus, as crazy as it might seem at the moment, everyone’s thoughts are turning to the coming harvest which, if you produce white wines, is just a month away.
We also come to a rather critical moment for DO Penedès as this will be the first harvest for them where absolutely all the grapes that come in will need to be organically certified.
This might seem a strange thing to make note of and the reason for that is they’re first wine region in all of Spain to require this. It’s why they started working towards this goal, back in 2021 as part of their ‘2030 Strategic Plan’. And note that while Corpinnat’s producers need to be certified orangic at a minimum (and occupy roughly the same area as DO Penedès), they don’t as of yet have DO status.
While organic production in the dry viticultural zones of the Mediterranean is less challenging than say Galicia or Bordeaux, it’s not without its challenges. This was readily shown with the largescale mildew attack that hit in 2020. That vintage saw a number of producers who were working towards organic certification in DO Cava use chemical treatments in order to bring in the vintage and thus lose their certification unfortunately.
It remains to be seen how this will affect producers who have uncertified hectares but there is the ability to use DO Catalunya which overlaps DO Penedès for still wines. There is also DO Cava which, despite their recent promotional efforts to state that their ‘Cava de Guarda Superior’ classification is, like DO Penedès, only for organically-grown grapes from 2025 onwards, this but a mere 13% of the total production.
Needless to say, it will be an interesting evolution to watch and hopefully Penedès will be the first of many to take this on. In the meantime, here’s a selection of DO Penedès wines that have been certified as organic for quite some time and will have no issue with the new regulations other than to ask, “Why didn’t it happy sooner?”
Wines
