“Take what you want,” says the Arab proverb, “and pay for it.” This seems obvious to the point of cliché, except for the hallowed tradition of trying to ignore the payment bit. Tax cheats want smooth roads and rubbish collection organised by celestial beings who scorn remuneration; not a few women hunt for ways to pack half a century of experience inside the springy epidermis of a 25-year-old.
There is something wrong with our ability to calculate cause and consequence, although there is, to be fair, also a profound flaw in a universe where it’s easier to fiddle your taxes than keep your youthful complexion. Still, the most important outcome of this defect in our species, if you don’t count war, is crap, cheap wine.
There is a lesson here, if we could but see it. If you buy something at half price, or you buy one and get one free, and the one in question is horrible, you have not got a bargain. You are not taking what you want – but you are paying for what you get. This is a terrible deal. So why do we persist?
Partly, through ignorance. It is one of my biggest gripes with this country (and, trust me, I have plenty) that we don’t know how to drink. It is perfectly acceptable among most twentysomething Brits to down six pints of rotgut in the pub with no dinner but if I had a pound for every time someone interpreted my interest in wine as snobbery or alcoholism or both, I’d be able to buy up all those substandard pubs and close them down. Well, I’m sorry but I win this one. The only kind of bargain I like is something that’s worth paying for – which is not at all to say I want to spend a fortune on my evening beverage.
Which brings me to cava. No – put down that £6 supermarket bottle and listen. Cava has sold itself as cheap bubbles for the celebrating classes with great success: nearly 36 million bottles arrived on our doorstep last year and I’ve yet to meet anyone who has never heard of the stuff. I’ve also met very few people who think it tastes nice but that’s because they’re drinking the wrong cava.
Most cava comes from Penedès, near the little town Sant Sadurní d’Anoia, just outside Barcelona, and contains some combination of Xarel-lo, Parellada and Macabeu grapes, although Chardonnay and PinotNoir, two of the varieties allowed in champagne, also show up, and there is Monastrell and Trepat in the rosés. But definitions are loose, production standards low and the priority seems to be keeping it cheap rather than making it good. Several of the best producers are so irritated by this image problem that they’ve stopped labelling their wines as cava at all. Pepe Raventós, who makes the superb Raventós i Blanc fizz, has come up with an alternative name and a strict set of rules for his little patch. He wants the designation Conca del Riu Anoia; I wish him luck getting the English to ask for that.
The man more likely to get this country clamouring for cava is Richard Bigg, owner of London’s four Camino restaurants and Pepito, a sherry utopia whose only flaw is its extreme titchiness. He has now opened Copa de Cava, a bar dedicated to Spanish fizz, beneath Camino San Pablo, near St Paul’s. In a vaulted cellar, delightfully decorated with pig haunches, sit cavas ranging from £4.75 a glass to £95 a bottle.
Here, you can try the toasty complexity of Gramona’s superb 2007 brut; a 100 per cent Pinot Noir by Juvé y Camps that pings sour cherries at you; or a delicately drinkable Raventós i Blanc rosat, made from the three traditional cava grapes, plus Monastrell. House fizz is Vilarnau brut, a decent, lemony starter cava. These producers vinify carefully, age judiciously and sell at a price that can keep them in jamón. The results are splendid and, like champagne (which is made using the same process), include differing styles as well as prices. If you want to stick to your tongue-scorcher, fine: you’re paying for it, after all. But drinking bad booze is too high a price for me.
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