Behind the bright, value-driven Azimut label stands a family that has farmed the same medieval estate in the Penedes since the 1600s.
Backstory
Azimut is the organic-grape project of the Suriol family, owners of Cellers de Can Suriol del Castell. The family has farmed the property, centered on the 15th-century farmhouse of Castell de Grabuac, for some 400 years. The estate survived the phylloxera that devastated the region around 1890, replanted, and began bottling its own wine in the 1940s. Under Francesc Suriol Canti in the 1980s, the family started producing Cava under its own name. In Catalan, Azimut evokes the line between the sun, as energy, and the sea, as Mediterranean calm.
The Region
The estate lies in the Alt Penedes, about 60 kilometers west of Barcelona in Catalonia. The Penedes is Spain's traditional home of Cava, with a Mediterranean climate tempered by altitude and proximity to the coast, and soils of clay and limestone.
Vineyards & Farming
Cellers de Can Suriol earned organic certification from the CCPAE, Catalonia's organic council, in 1996, making it one of the pioneering organic growers in the Penedes. In recent years the family has added biodynamic practices, following lunar cycles and avoiding synthetic inputs. The Azimut wines are made from organic grapes the family also buys from like-minded neighbors, with Macabeu and Xarel-lo from coastal and inland sites and varieties such as Sumoll and Garnatxa from the Costers del Montmell hills. The project is explicitly meant to encourage organic farming across the region.
Winemaking
The wines lean on traditional Catalan varieties and indigenous-yeast fermentation. The Cava ferments first in underground concrete tanks before its second fermentation in bottle.
The Wines
The signature bottling is the Azimut Cava Brut Nature, a blend of roughly 40 percent Macabeu, 30 percent Xarel-lo and 30 percent Parellada, aged a minimum of 10 months on the lees and bottled with no dosage. The range extends to a Brisat skin-contact white, plus still whites, rose and reds such as Azimut Negre, all from the same organic, locally farmed fruit.
