From the atlas
Celler Casajou
At A Glance
- Country: Spain
- Region: Penedès, Catalonia
- Village: Sant Jaume Sesoliveres, Anoia River Valley
- Grape: Xarel·lo (primary), Macabeo (co-planted), Garnacha
- Style: Sparkling, single-vintage, parcel-fermented
- Annual production: Approximately 7,000 bottles
- Founded: April 2020
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
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.
Soil And Site
The Poch family vineyard, near Sant Sadurní d'Anoia, is the most important parcel in the range. It is 1.5 hectares, south-facing, on clay soils, with Xarel·lo vines planted in 1963 and trained as bush vines. Old clay-rooted Xarel·lo produces small, concentrated clusters. The south orientation pushes ripeness; the clay holds moisture through the dry Penedès summers. Casajou vinifies this parcel alone.
Story
Laia Esmel trained as an oenologist. Jaume Vilaseca worked as a photographer. They had left Sant Jaume Sesoliveres for careers elsewhere and returned in April 2020, in the first weeks of the pandemic, with a plan to make parcel-specific sparkling wine from the valley they had grown up in.
The choice of parcel-level vinification placed them at an angle to the mainstream Penedès model. Cava production in this region is built around blending, scale and consistency across vintages. Casajou went the other way: each vineyard fermented separately, each wine released as a single-vintage bottle. The second fermentation uses juice saved from the previous year rather than added sugar, which ties each release to the preceding harvest. The wines age on lees until Laia and Jaume decide they are ready.
By 2024 the project had attracted attention from specialist importers and a critical mention in La Vanguardia for the La Caldereta 2020. At 7,000 bottles total across three cuvées, Casajou remains deliberately small.
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
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.
The other two cuvées follow the same architecture: single-vintage, parcel-sourced, native-yeast fermented, aged before secondary fermentation. The range has a consistent register described by the importer as bright, light and fresh, with a saline touch. Garnacha appears alongside Xarel·lo as part of the founders' stated ambition for the range, though Xarel·lo anchors all three wines at present.
At 7,000 bottles total, the range is not built for broad availability. Each vintage is a single production run; there is no reserve base, no non-vintage blend.
In The Glass
Xarel·lo from the Anoia Valley tends toward orchard fruit and citrus peel, with a savouriness that sets it apart from the softer, more neutral profile of Champagne varieties. In Casajou's wines, that native character is sharpened by native-yeast fermentation and extended lees contact: the mousse is fine, the acidity is firm and mouth-watering, and a mineral salinity lifts the finish rather than a sweetness or a dosage weight. Oak and chestnut ageing before the secondary fermentation adds a faint textural depth without pushing toward toasted or oxidative territory.
La Caldereta 2020, with its thirty-plus months on lees, sits at the fuller end of that spectrum: the mousse integrates, the fruit compresses into citrus and green apple, and the clay-rooted Xarel·lo gives a grip on the finish that persists. The other cuvées, with less extreme lees ageing, have a lighter, brighter profile.
A Bottle To Understand It
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. Start here to understand what old Xarel·lo from a specific Penedès parcel can do.
Anecdote
In April 2020, Laia Esmel and Jaume Vilaseca returned to Sant Jaume Sesoliveres, the village where they had both grown up, and walked into the ground floor of the family home. The space had been Laia's grandfather's grocery shop. It had not been a winery before. They took the shelves down, brought in barrels and tanks, and moved the family storage into whatever remained. Their apartment stayed directly above. The first vintage, 2020, was made from vineyards they had been visiting and renting since 2019, fermented and aged in that converted shop below where they slept. The grocery was gone. In its place: three cuvées, native yeasts, old-vine Xarel·lo, and roughly 7,000 bottles of Penedès sparkling wine from a winery that fits beneath a family home.
Final Word
Celler Casajou is a small project making careful, parcel-specific sparkling wine from Xarel·lo in a corner of Catalonia better known for large-scale cava. Founded in April 2020 by two people who came home and converted a grocery shop, it produces around 7,000 bottles a year across three single-vintage cuvées. La Caldereta, from sixty-year-old vines on clay near Sant Sadurní d'Anoia, is the wine to seek out first.
Sources
- https://www.cellercasajou.com/en/
- https://www.cellercasajou.com/en/sparkling-wines
- https://www.carteblanchewines.com/casajou
- https://b2w.wine/the-penedes-identity-with-dumenge-and-casajou/
- https://www.lavanguardia.com/comer/beber/20240623/9741735/vino-semana-caldereta-2020-celler-casajou-brl.html