Freixenet Winery
An advertising icon and a cava pioneer
An advertising icon and a cava pioneer
At its hundred-year-old winery, Freixenet produces its cava using the traditional method.
A company of firsts
The Freixenet winery, which was founded in 1861, produced its first sparkling wine in 1914. It was the start of a business venture that has made this brand into one of the world’s most popular brands of cava.
Freixenet was the first winery to create a brand icon: the famous ‘Freixenet Boy’, created for the 1929 Barcelona Universal Exposition. It was also the first, in 1972, to create the ‘Freixenet Bubbles’, which since then have become the symbol of the company's television advertisements. Liza Minelli, Gene Kelly, Christopher Reeve, Plácido Domingo, Raquel Welch, Paul Newman, Sharon Stone, Antonio Banderas, Penélope Cruz, Pierce Brosnan, and Simon Baker (in an advertisement directed by Martin Scorsese) are some of the stars who have featured in these adverts. And Freixenet was also the first cava in space: in 1997 one of its bottles was opened on the International Space Station.
Freixenet’s vineyards are located in Sant Sadurní d’Anoia, on land perfect for the Macabeu, Xarel·lo and Parellada varieties, which are the three most suitable for making cava. The winery’s cellars were built in 1923 in the Modernista style and are 20 metres under ground in order to guarantee suitable conditions for the preparation of this sparkling wine in accordance with the traditional method, the same one it has been using for 100 years.
Now, Freixenet is an international company that in addition to producing its own cava brands also owns other wine brands, such as René Barbier and Segura Viudas. Cordón Negro and Carta Nevada are the company’s flagship cavas, but the Freixenet brand is associated with a wide variety of wines and cavas and has an extensive international presence.