My star of CavaTast: Cavas Mestres

This past weekend was the annual Cavatast event, a three day exhibition, tasting and block party in the town of Sant Saduni d'Anoia, the capital of Cava. There were 45 local cava producers, restaurants and delis on hand to supply the goods. Last year, over 50,000 people attended and this past Sunday, it felt like a good many of them had returned! There was a great, convivial atmosphere and plenty of good cava.

For me, the big discovery of the event was the new presentation of the Celler Mestres brand.

This is a high quality, upscale producer whose "simplest" cava is bottle aged for 36 months, or 4 times the aging required by the Cava D.O. This extra aging gives their cavas a creamy richness that is well set-off by the tiny persistent bubbles.

Mestres has totally redone their packaging, using texts and typefonts from historical documents to make the capsules, and a few of the bottle labels. Other bottles use solid color labels, and their top of the line Gran Reserva cava, "Mas Via", which is first aged in oak for 1 year and in the bottle for a further 7 years, simply has 3 plus symbols where you would normally see the main label (this is a play on the name "Mestres", which in the local catalan language could mean "plus three").

Mestres currently sells most of their cavas in Spain, with some activity in the UK. In 2006 they plan to make further expansion in overseas markets. With these cavas and packaging, they should really get noticed!