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Sant Sadurní d'Anoia sits in the Penedès wine country of Catalonia, roughly forty kilometres south-west of Barcelona, and its identity is inseparable from the wine that made it famous. This is the undisputed capital of cava, the traditional-method sparkling wine produced in the surrounding limestone hills, and the town wears that distinction with quiet confidence rather than tourist fanfare. The Alt Penedès comarca rolls out around it in long, orderly rows of Macabeu, Xarel·lo and Parellada vines, the three grape varieties that form the backbone of most cava blends, and the landscape itself tells you what matters here before you have even stepped off the train.

The town centre is compact and unhurried, built around the church of Sant Sadurní and a grid of streets that fill with locals on market days. It is not a place that performs for visitors; it simply gets on with the serious business of wine production. Dozens of cava houses, from grand family dynasties whose cellars stretch for kilometres underground to small artisan producers working a handful of hectares, are concentrated within a short radius. Some of the most recognisable names in Spanish sparkling wine have their headquarters here, and the architecture of their nineteenth and early twentieth-century bodegas, many built in the Modernista style that flourished across Catalonia during the same era, gives the town an unexpected elegance.