Those who know me will avow my love of all things sparkly, and that includes wines. One of the – many – joys of living in Barcelona is having the Penedès wine region just down the road, so my penchant for good sparkling wine can be satisfied in the knowledge  that I am contributing to the local economy and using minimal ‘food miles’.

Now, a good wine is a marvellous thing, yet I also like to have a stash of cheap-n-cheerful fizzy tucked away for those times when I have people over for dinner and – inevitably – we run out of wine at some point in the early hours of the morning.

In the past I’ve kept this stocked up simply by adding several bottles to my list of ‘heavy things to buy from a supermarket on-line delivery service so I don’t have to carry them upstairs myself’ each month.  However, since my pledge to avoid buying from supermarkets I had resigned myself to having to pay a bit more and perhaps be a little less generous. Then – doh! – I remembered that I live less than five minutes walk from probably the most famous purveyor of inexpensive Cava in Barcelona.

Most people know Can Paixano as ‘the Cava bar’ or ‘the Champaneriya’. It’s the narrow, always packed, hole-in-the-wall place in the galerias del puerto that doesn’t need to have a sign above it’s huge wooden doors because it’s such a Barcelona legend. What plenty people don’t realise is that tucked away at the back of the long narrow room is a small delicatessen selling embutidos, good quality preserved seafood, and of course their house brand Cava.

As it turns out I can just squeeze six bottles – a bargain at about 18 euros – and a chorizo into my usual shopping bag. Problem solved.

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