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EDITORIAL
FRANÇOIS GILBERT - EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
HOW CAVA IS BECOMING MORE RESILIENT
The Spanish sparkling wine appellation has experienced
incremental growth over the past few years,
fuelled by its dynamic marketing strategies and competitive
pricing, particularly in export markets. After two
climate alerts in previous years, the 2023 harvest put a
true damper on the industry’s enthusiasm as drought
swept across the region and led volumes to plummet in
some cases, potentially stifling growth in the future.
This is a real issue for Cava because unlike Champagne,
for example, it cannot use reserve wines from previous
years to make up for the shortfall. Fortunately, not all
vineyard sites were affected equally and some managed
to avoid the downturn. Nevertheless, this mini crisis will
have repercussions, including for prices which are likely
to increase. It will probably also end sales promotions in
a bid to recoup some of the volume losses by improving
value gains.
We travelled to a number of Cava producing regions –
not just Catalonia but also Extremadura and Aragon – to
sound out industry sentiment after this unprecedented,
seismic event (see page 102). Producers are actually fairly
confident and are focusing on their ability to innovate to
overcome this setback. They are taking practical, common
sense measures like implementing vineyard management
techniques that promote water retention for instance –
deep tillage and winter ground cover – in order to curb
the worst effects of drought. Common sense and forward
planning have, after all, always made good bedfellows.
4 WINTER 2023 • GILBERT & GAILLARD - THE FRENCH EXPERTS ON WINE