Sparkling Roadways

 Should TV-7232 ever have a ‘Friends of’ page on Facebook, I will join. It doesn’t.  I’ve looked.  Nor does this singular road seem to trouble the web much above road work warnings. This is a sad lack.  It winds passed somewhat glorious vineyards. It has views.  I imagine the heat of a june afternoon.  Chirping things and shimmering heat haze complete my idyll.  




You know people talk about wine and suggest it can be any other colour than red. Nonsense I know but what can you do with some people.  Champagne is, without doubt, the most overrated thing on the planet.  I can only assume that is the reason sports stars spray it everywhere.  If they have to have something to drink, try cava.




The word cava means cave or cellar. The name for the fizzy wine was adopted in 1970 because the French were probably getting picky over their own fizzy stuff.  The one advantage of this is that it has given us constant jokes along the lines, it is only existentialism if it comes from the existentialist region of France.  Otherwise it is just sparkling anxiety.




Catalan sparkling wine was first made as early as 1851, The roots of the cava industry can be traced back to Josep Raventós'spottering through Europe in the 1860s, where he was promoting the still wines of the Codorníu vinyard. He popped into the Champagne wine region, as you do, and he got  interest in the potential of a Spanish wine made using the same method. He created his first sparkling wine in 1872, after the vineyards of Penedès were devastated by the phylloxera plague, and the predominantly red vines were being replaced by large numbers of vines producing white grapes.  This may be regarded as one of the worst outcomes of the whole incident.




Catalan cava producers pioneered a technological development in sparkling wine production with the invention of the gyropalette, a large mechanized device that replaced hand riddling.  Cava is now also made in Aragon, Castilla Y Leon, Extremadura, La Rioja. The Basque Country, Navarre and Valencia.  




Ans so we end and look forward to tomorrow.











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