History Gramona
The story of this winery located in Sant Sadurni d’Anoia is interesting to tell. It was officially founded in 1881 by Pau Batlle, but older documents from 1816 show that Pau’s father, Josep, already made wine there. Because of the phylloxera crisis, Pau Batlle decided to bottle his own cava and to commercialise it from his house in Sant Sadurní. Rapidly, he became one of the most important wine merchants in Penedès! All this while, the Gramona family owned restaurants in Barcelona, including pubs in the old centre districts. Josep Gramona was even president of the local association of barkeepers. The Gramona also owned a holiday home in Sant Sadurní d’Anoia, with a nice wine collection. The paths of the two families crossed when Bartomeu Gramona (Josep’s son) and Pilar Batlle (Pau’s daughter) married in 1913. Bartomeu became an oenologist and in 1921 his first Cavas were shipped from the Carrer Industria cellar – still in use today. Of this marriage, two sons were born, who expanded the family business again. Today, their sons Jaume and Xavier Gramona (the fifth generation) do the same, more successfully than ever. Jaume is one of Spain’s most famous oenologists (he teaches at the Faculty of Oenology in Tarragona). He is THE bubble specialist; he continuously experiments with new winemaking techniques and new improvements in the vineyards. Xavier was trained as an economist, and is the commercial manager. In addition to its own products, Gramona is also the distributor of several great Spanish wines in Catalonia. Gramona is now the absolute reference for cava. Year after year, it has received awards in Spain and abroad. Gramona still believes in a long ageing on racks; it has also developed a real proficiency in the dosage process (a special cellar is dedicated to this) and soleras. In 2001, Gramona inaugurated a new cellar in the hills overlooking Sant Sadurní, a new “Celler Batlle”, where the winemaking process and the bottling of all its wines now take place. Only the ageing process still takes place in the cellars of Carrer Industria where everything began, in 1921. The most important factor for quality in this cellar is quite easy to define: time.