Wine route through... D. O. Empordà

Three gen­er­a­tions of the fam­ily have ded­i­cated their lives to the Oliveda vine­yard, be­gin­ning with José Oliveda Casanovas and his wife Joana Rigau Ros. Anna Maria Oliveda Rigau, the cou­ple’s only child, de­cided to fol­low in the foot­steps of her par­ents, along with her hus­band Josep Freixa Es­carrà, and the fam­ily busi­ness has grown from there. Cur­rently, the com­pany is headed by Al­fonso Freixa Oliveda, their son, who in his 30 years in charge has been able to adapt to new needs and is build­ing a pro­ject with its own iden­tity. The win­ery is lo­cated at the foot of the Al­bera hills, in an area well known for the ef­fects of the Tra­muntana wind, at Cap­many. They grow a va­ri­ety of grapes; the more tra­di­tional Grenache and Carig­nan have been joined by the more in­ter­na­tion­ally known Caber­net, Syrah, Mer­lot, Sauvi­gnon Blanc and Chardon­nay.

The cel­lar’s wide va­ri­ety of wines fall into four fam­i­lies:

Mediter­ranean wines, which in­cludes the Rigau Ros, Masia Oliveda and Clos Pri­mat la­bels.

Es­tate wines, wines from grapes planted in the Rabós, Vil­a­man­is­cle and Cap­many vine­yards.

Sweet wines, a range that has been a sta­ple for many years in the Em­pordà area.

And lastly, the caves, one of the main prod­ucts of this win­ery, mar­keted under four la­bels: OH!, Fa­milia Oliveda, Gran Rigau and Batet.

Chef Toni Sabas was born in San Sadurní, in cava coun­try, where he grew up in the vine­yards . He was al­ways fond of food, and in 1994 en­rolled at the Barcelona Es­cola d’Hosta­le­ria and at the same time worked in La Llar del Pagès restau­rant in Barcelona’s Sants dis­trict. His in­ter­est in food from fur­ther afield came from meet­ing Louis Ne­ichel. La Llar del Pagès in Cap­many opened in De­cem­ber 2001, and has since been de­voted to care­ful prepa­ra­tion of its pro­duce to ex­tract the best flavour using the best culi­nary meth­ods to en­sure the great­est care is taken over the process. Toni is a lover of foie gras, truf­fles and mush­rooms, and they take great pride in their ded­i­cated sea­sonal menus, tak­ing ad­van­tage of local pro­duce when it is at its best.