Huguet de Can Feixes

Huguet de Can Feixes is the sparkling side of Finca Can Feixes, at Cabrera d'Anoia on the slopes of the interior hills that look out toward Barcelona and Montserrat. The house splits its names: still wines go out as Can Feixes, the Corpinnat sparklings as Huguet de Can Feixes.

The producer's own timeline puts a chapel on the site before 1400 and the masia's east wing, with the wine cellar on its ground floor, rebuilt around 1700. The 1768 carved over the cellar entrance, alongside "8BRE ALS 27" and the Feixes family name, is the inscription the modern brand took for its seal, not the year the current owners arrived. Can Feixes fell into disrepair in the early twentieth century after the Feixes line died out, and the ruined estate was bought by the brothers Josep Maria and Miquel Huguet i Pommés, from nearby Piera.

Of 343 ha of forest, meadow, olive grove and vineyard, 80 ha are planted, climbing to around 400 m on chalk, clay and fairly stony soils with good water retention. Every parcel lies within 1.5 km of the winery, and all the fruit is estate-grown. Eleven varieties: Macabeo, Parellada, Xarel·lo, Malvasia de Sitges, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Garnatxa, Ull de Llebre, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Verdot. The vineyard is certified organic by the CCPAE, and the producer counts more than 200,000 vines worked by hand every year, never by machine. Joan Huguet, co-owner of the estate, is president of the DO Penedès regulatory council.

Huguet de Can Feixes joined Corpinnat in October 2018, the seventh winery in the association after the six founding houses: Gramona, Llopart, Nadal, Recaredo, Castellroig and Torelló. Corpinnat is not an appellation but an EU collective trademark, owned by an association of growers and producers, and it binds its members to certified organic grapes, hand harvest, complete vinification on their own premises, fruit from their own harvests or from long-standing grower relationships at a guaranteed minimum price, ageing always longer than 18 months, and annual external audits; each member must also market one wine aged over 30 months and another over 60. The founding houses left DO Cava in 2019. These bottles carry no DO at all: Corpinnat sparklings are sold, legally, as quality sparkling wine.

The name is built from cor, for the cradle where Spain's first traditional-method sparkling wines were made, and pinnat, from the Latin pinna, meaning crag - the rocky ground that gave the Penedès its name.