Josep Raventós of Codorníu made Spain's first bottle-fermented sparkling wine in 1872, just as phylloxera was pushing Penedès to tear out its reds and replant in white grapes — a catastrophe that supplied a new industry with its raw material. The name is simply "cellar": the deep, cool galleries dug beneath Sant Sadurní d'Anoia, where millions of bottles still rest.
Cava is made by the traditional method with a native trio — Macabeo, Xarel·lo, Parellada, with Chardonnay a later guest — giving apple, citrus and fennel, and brioche with age. For decades it was the world's underpriced sparkling wine, the reflex bottle of ordinary celebrations; a premium tier of long-aged, single-estate cuvées now insists, with growing success, that the cellars deserve better.