Gramona

History, terroir and biodynamics.

The origins of Bodega Gramona date from the mid XIXth century, when Pau Batlle, the grandfather of the family, sold wine from Penedès to sparkling wine producers from France that had been heavily impacted by the devastation caused in their country by the phylloxera plague. With the earnings, Mr. Batlle was able to start his own wine producing company, called Celler Batlle -after which one of the finest Gramona sparkling wines is named.

The Gramona dinasty originated at the beginning of the XXth century, when Pilar Batlle, the daughter of Pau Batlle, married the scion of an important Penedès wine family. Over the following years, Celler Gramona became one of the most prestigious producers of Spanish sparkling wine, with a particular focus on aged sparkling wines such as Gramona III Lustros, one of the flagship wines of the company (first produced in 1951, but not released until 1961.)

In the early XXIth century, the fifth generation of the Gramona family, headed by the cousins Xavier Gramona and Jaume Gramona, decided to abandon the DO Cava with a group of like-minded wineries in order to create the Corpinnat association of sparkling wine producers, registered as a collective European Union brand in 2017. Thus, most Gramona sparkling wines are sold under the Corpinnat label ('Corpinnat' means 'born in the heart of Penedès'.)

In 2021, the Gramona family celebrated its first century as a sparkling wine producer, and soon afterwards the cousins Roc Gramona and Leo Gramona took the torch from their fathers at the helm of Gramona winery. The sixth generation has strengthened and deepened the company's long-standing committment to biodynamic agriculture, to environmental sustainability (100% of its energy from renewable sources) and, last but not least, to the traditional Penedès varieties.

Located 30 km south of Barcelona and protected from the northern winds by the Montserrat mountain range, the estate vineyards of Gramona winery cover a surface area around 65 hectares (all Demeter certified), composed of clay, limestone and alluvial soils, with a higher slate content as they approach the Montserrat mountains. Besides the estate vineyards, the winery supervises a further 360 hectares of biodynamically certified vines, owned by the members of Aliances per la Terra, an association of winegrowers from Penedès founded and directed by Gramona.

As regards vineyard management, bodega Gramona uses cover crops, animal traction, biodynamic preparations and the Simonit & Sirch method of vine pruning. The main varieties are Xarel·lo, Macabeo and Parellada, complemented with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. The winery has also planted the red varieties Grenache and Sumoll, as well as Malvasia de Sitges, a white Penedès variety with a distinctive acidity. Yearly production of Corpinnat sparkling wines by the Gramona winery averages 720,000 bottles.