World’s First 100% Certified Organic (Major) Wine Region
There was a moment at dinner on my first night in Sitges – the tourist hotspot on Spain’s Garraf coastline, nearby to Barcelona, and the start of The Wine Road – when I almost couldn’t believe my ears. ‘We have just’, my Spanish dining companion said to me, ‘at the end of this vintage, become the first wine appellation in the world to be entirely certified organic.”
As in, every single producer in his entire wine region, without exception, now farms its grapes organically. In fact, every cellar is organic too. Certified organic, that is.
The region in question is the Penedès wine appellation of Spain; the Spanish region most famous for the growing and making of Cava – Spain’s premier traditional method, bottle-aged sparkling wine. The vintage in question was the just-gone 2025 Spanish vintage.
The Penedès wine region/appellation, it’s important to note, is the centre of Cava wine growing. More prosaically, Penedès is often referred to as Cava’s spiritual home. It’s a significant appellation, making a significant style. It has between 160 and 230 wine producers – depending on definitions – and somewhere in the vicinity of 2000 wine grape growers. Penedès covers a substantial 5000 hectares.
The size of the Penedès region makes this 100%-certified-organic achievement, therefore, all the more significant. In fact, it makes this achievement almost mind-boggling. There are smaller examples of 100% organic (regions) in the world of wine, the French AOP Les Baux-de-Provence a noted example. But Les Baux-de-Provence only covers 12 wineries, and just 277 hectares.
There is too – to risk angering the elephant in the corner of this particular Spanish room – the breakaway group of Cava’s very own producers, known as Corpinnat. The very idea of the Corpinnat group has organic production running through its blood; organics – along with certain guarantees around tradition and even quality – is one of the foundation stones of every Corpinnat member. To muddy matters (slightly) even further, in these parts there’s also the region-within-a-region known as Classic Penedès, which has also been organic-guaranteed for roughly a decade. The Corpinnat group of producers has 22 members. Classic Penedès has 15. By any estimation then this achievement by the entire Penedès region is remarkable. Two thousand growers. Two hundred-ish producers. 5000 hectares. Every winery. Certified organic. It’s almost unimaginable that this is even possible.
The world of Spanish wine, though, can get tangled up in blue, or red tape, very quickly. Complications and inconvenient truths abound. The spiritual home of Cava is Penedès but Cava, unlike Champagne, is not a region. Cava can be produced outside of Penedès. Given that in wine marketing terms the best messages can be summarised in one or two or three words (French Champagne, Barossa Shiraz, Burgundy, Californian Cabernet, Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc) the fact that Cava historically has meant, essentially, Spanish sparkling wine that is made using the traditional method of sparkling wine production, most of which is centred around the Penedès appellation, though not all of it, is a bit too much of a mouthful. Hence Corpinnat. A bottle of Cava might be from Penedès, but it might not be. A bottle of Corpinnat is, by definition, from Penedès. But Cava is recognised world-wide and Corpinnat (the breakaway group of cava producers) isn’t. Got it?
I told you that things here get complicated quickly.
The reason I just dipped my toe into the waters of these complications though is because they are crucial to this historic moment in time. A major international wine region has won the unwinnable and convinced every single one of its players to become fully certified organic. There had to be a major reason for it to do so. In fact, it had to be earth-shattering.
There were no doubt green, sustainable, environmental, climate-changing reasons in play. No doubt. But the more significant impetus is the fractures within, the pressures of the global market, and the overwhelming need to shorten the message. Cava is complicated; this message is simple. The World’s First Organic Wine Region is an attempt to hurdle the complications.
In other words, this is a What is Penedès? moment. It says: We are organic. We are serious. We are not about methods of production. We are land.
Or, even shorter, We are Penedès.
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Cava reviews by Campbell Mattinson.
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Below: Photo Essay of my time in Penedès, Spain.
I was in Spain/Penedès to attend the Cava Conference, held at the below venue. Can confirm that paella was served.
Inside the tent (below, and literally) of the 2025 Cava Conference in Penedès, Spain. Do I always sit at the back? If I can help it, yes.
As I scoffed paella, during the Cava Conference 2025, I walked to the back of the conference property and snapped this view of the truly magnificent Montserrat. Note the vineyards in the foreground and, possibly, cork trees. Don’t quote me on the latter. I was chatting with a Russian wine trade dude and he suggested that they were. Send correspondence to him.
Note the snaked trellising of the vines on this high (Pares Balta) vineyard. This vineyard is set within a protected national park.
