Last November, I joined over 100 wine professionals from around the world in Penedès, the heartland of Cava DO, for Cava Meeting, a gathering organized by the Cava Regulatory Board (Consejo Regulador del Cava) that I attended as part of GuildSomm’s Great Cava Pursuit. With the Montserrat mountain range on the horizon, between discussions about the DO’s future, we paired premium examples of Cava, Spain’s signature traditional method sparkling wine, with choice cuts of paper-thin Ibérico ham and tasted rare Cava wines aged more than 100 months on the lees. The first evening, the team behind the three-Michelin-starred El Celler de Can Roca catered dinner. Each dish was paired, naturally, with Cava.

The message was clear: the future of Cava lies at the high end. Specifically, Cava de Guarda Superior, the category launched in 2022 as Cava’s premium tier. While these wines account for just under 12% of total production, the near-exclusive focus on them at Cava Meeting signaled the DO’s ongoing push to change the dominant perception of Cava as simply an inexpensive, high-volume sparkler.

Javier Pagés, the president of the Cava Regulatory Board, says that for Cava, “there is only one way to go, and it is the high road.”

In 2022, the Cava Regulatory Board released a new set of regulations, which included the establishment of the Cava de Guarda Superior category. About a year after they were implemented, GuildSomm contributor Jessica Dupuy wrote a comprehensive overview of the rules and the opportunities they presented. Since then, producers say progress, while not dramatic, has been made. The elaborador integral designation and a new organic requirement for all Guarda Superior wines have given producers and sommeliers a sharper story to tell in the marketplace. The just-released 2025 data offers some encouragement: the Guarda Superior category held its ground, even as overall Cava sales fell nearly 13%, a decline linked