Why it matters
The producer
The ground floor of a family home in Sant Jaume Sesoliveres holds a winery. It was a grocery shop until April 2020, when oenologist Laia Esmel and photographer Jaume Vilaseca returned to the Catalan village where they had grown up, cleared the shelves, and moved in barrels and tanks. Their home sits directly above. Celler Casajou began there, in that compressed space, making sparkling wine from Penedès parcels they had been seeking out since 2019.
The project produces three single-vintage cuvées, totalling around 7,000 bottles a year. Every parcel is fermented separately, with native yeasts. The range is built around Xarel·lo, the grape native to this part of Catalonia, and the wines are sparkling in a way that has nothing to do with industrial cava: slow ageing on lees, juice from the preceding vintage used to trigger the second fermentation, no added sugar.
Place and vineyards
Where the wines begin
Sant Jaume Sesoliveres sits in the Anoia River Valley, within the Penedès DO. It is a small agricultural village with 180 hectares of vineyards, sixteen growers and five wineries. The climate here is Mediterranean with a continental edge: winters are mild, summers are hot and dry, and the vine stress that produces concentrated, low-yielding fruit is built into the growing season.
Sant Sadurní d'Anoia, the town a short distance away where Casajou works its key vineyard parcel, is the traditional heart of cava production in Catalonia. Casajou operates inside the Penedès DO but works against the commodity cava assumption: single parcels, single vintages, small volumes, extended lees contact.
In the cellar
Vineyards and cellar
Casajou works vineyards it rents and farms itself, selecting parcels for separate vinification. Soil regeneration is an active part of the vineyard approach: the founders describe it as one of the essential interventions they make, rather than something imposed on a managed system.
In the cellar, each parcel is fermented with its own native yeasts and then aged for one year in a combination of oak barrels, chestnut barrels and stainless steel. The choice of vessel varies by parcel. After that year of ageing, the wine enters its second fermentation in bottle, triggered by juice from the preceding vintage. Lees contact then continues until disgorging. For La Caldereta 2020, that lees ageing ran to more than thirty months after the year in vessel. Chestnut contributes a different wood character than oak, slightly more porous and with its own tannin register; the mix of vessels means each cuvée builds complexity from several directions before the second fermentation adds the mousse.
Wines to know
The range in view
Casajou makes three cuvées, all sparkling, all single-vintage, all built on Xarel·lo from specific parcels.
La Caldereta is the anchor wine. It comes from the Poch family vineyard near Sant Sadurní d'Anoia: 1.5 hectares, south-facing, Xarel·lo planted in 1963 on clay, grown as bush vines. The vineyard is co-planted with a small proportion of Macabeo, around 5%, which goes into the blend. The 2020 vintage aged for more than thirty months on lees after its year in stainless steel, producing a wine with sustained depth and a tight mousse. La Vanguardia assessed the 2020 as having bright, fresh character with a saline edge.
A useful way in
A bottle to begin with
La Caldereta is the right first bottle. It comes from a single parcel: 1963 Xarel·lo, bush vines, clay soils, south-facing, 1.5 hectares near Sant Sadurní d'Anoia. The wine aged in stainless steel for one year, then spent more than thirty months on lees in bottle. What you find in the glass is firm, mouth-watering acidity, a fine integrated mousse, a core of citrus and green apple, and a saline mineral finish that does not fade quickly. There is no dosage sweetness, no oxidative warmth. The clay and the old vines give the wine a grip and a density unusual for a sparkling wine at this price and production level.