Alella

The train from Barcelona-Plaça Catalunya has barely left the city when the vine terraces start. By the time the carriage squeaks into El Masnou, twelve minutes later, Alella’s vineyards are spilling down the coastal ridge like green lava. A three-minute bus hop – or an €8 taxi if luggage is involved – climbs 90 m to the village proper, where church bells echo across a sea horizon and every second doorway seems to hide a cellar door. It is the smallest Denominació d’Origen on the Spanish mainland, yet it sits inside the commuter belt of Spain’s second city. That contradiction shapes the place: a farming village whose rush hour is defined by the R1 timetable.

Terraces, Granite and Salt

The Romans planted here; the stone press at Vallmora winery still bears a legionnaire’s tally mark. What keeps the vines rooted is a skim of decomposed granite that warms quickly at dawn and reflects heat after dusk, giving the whites their hallmark lemon-peel snap. Because the rows are trained low to catch every breath of sea air, the grapes carry a faint salt tang – the taste geographers call maresmenc. Walk the signed “Camí del Vi” at sunset and you can watch the tramontana wind ruffle the leaves while container ships glide silently below, framed between syrah canes.

Harvest is manual – tractors can’t grip the ancient feixes – so crews still sing across the slopes. Alta Alella, the organic estate behind the 14th-century masia Can Genís, lets visitors follow a pick-and-press morning in mid-September; wellingtons are loaned, but bring long sleeves – the vines scratch. A two-hour visit finishes with four wines and a slab of formatge de tupí soaked in the same xarel·lo. The tasting fee (€18) is knocked off if you walk away with anything; most do, because prices start at €7 a bottle and the bodega will freight a case to the UK for under €40, cheaper than checking a suitcase.

A Village that Never Quite Grew Up

Alella’s population hovers around 5,000 – big enough for a pharmacy, small enough for the baker to notice a stranger. The grid of narrow lanes above Carrer d’Antoni Gaudí is still called el nucli antic, though the oldest fabric is medieval rather than ancient. Sant Feliu church, rebuilt after a French cannonball in 1543, keeps its Romanesque footprint but sports a blistered baroque façade; climb the tower (€2, weekends only) and the view runs from the toothy outline of Montseny to the glass towers of Diagonal Mar, 15 km away as the gull flies.

Modernista summer houses pepper the outskirts, built when Barcelona textile owners came for the air. Can Sors, all curls and wrought-iron nasturtiums, is now a private language school; you can peer through the gates but the real treat is the pavement opposite, where jacaranda drops a purple carpet each May. A five-minute stroll north brings you to Can Coll de la Muga, a 16th-century mas turned winery whose stone trough still feeds horses at dawn; they produce just 9,000 bottles a year, so the cava brut nature never reaches UK shelves – another reason to carry an empty rucksack.

When to Come, What to Dodge

April and late October give the sharpest light, empty tracks and cellar owners with time to talk. Mid-July’s Festa Major fills the plaça with giants and late-night orquestras; fun, but every room within the municipality is booked months ahead by Barcelona escapees. August afternoons are furnace-hot – the vineyards radiate heat like a pizza oven – and many wineries shut on Mondays anyway. Winter is mild enough for lunch outside, though the tramontana can gust at 70 km/h; call ahead, as some producers only open at weekends outside harvest.

The coast is temptingly close, yet the village sits 3 km inland and 90 m above it. First-timers who get off at the station marked “Alella” face a 35-minute uphill slog along a pavement-less road; the smarter move is to stay on the train one more stop to El Masnou, then grab the little green “El Far” bus that meets most trains. Taxis back down after dark are plentiful – the fare is still €8 if you book by WhatsApp – so you can finish with a swim at Ocata beach before returning to city neon.

What You’ll Drink – and Eat Between Glasses

Xarel·lo dominates, a grape that British palates usually meet only in Cava. Here it is bottled still: crisp, faintly herbal, closer to good Albariño than to Picpoul. Pair it with croquetes de bolets at Ca l’Estrada, a tiled bistro that charges €12 for three fat specimens and will decant any village white by the glass. Red drinkers get a silky garnacha – the local samsó clone – though quantities are tiny; if you find a 100% mataró (mourvèdre), snap it up, because most is syphoned off to beef up Priorat further west.

Lunch can be as simple as bread rubbed with tomato and draped with fuet sausage, but the village’s proximity to both sea and truck gardens shows on every menu. Cal Parellada, run by the fourth generation of the same family, serves a arròs negre whose squid ink is lifted by a slug of white wine from their own barrels; the €18 menu includes dessert and a half-bottle, so the bill rarely tops €25 a head. Vegetarians do better than in most Catalan villages: the escalivada here comes crowned with local goat cheese and a drizzle of arbequina oil sharp enough to make you pucker.

Taking it Home – or Letting it Follow

British visitors often arrive expecting picnic-table informality and leave surprised by the logistics. Bottles bought at the cellar door travel well – the DO’s trademark green glass is thick enough for hold luggage – but if you’d rather not haul, every producer listed on the www.doalella.cat site offers UK delivery. Duties are paid at source, so the case simply turns up five days later. A mixed dozen of current-release whites lands at roughly £110 all-in; the same wines appear on a famous London list at £48 a bottle, so the maths is painless.

Cyclists based in Barcelona treat Alella as a 40-km loop: coast out on the carril-bici, climb the feixes, descend for a swim. The gradient never reaches Pyrenean drama, but the back lane from Vallmora to Sant Mateu chapel ramps at 12% and the tarmac melts in July – arrive early or rent an e-bike at El Masnou station (€25 half-day). Hikers prefer the GR-92 coastal variant that cuts inland through the terraces; allow three hours to La Roca del Vallès with a return by Rodalies train, and carry more water than you think – shade is scarce.

Alella will not change your life. It is not dramatic, undiscovered or heart-stoppingly beautiful; it is simply a working wine village that happens to lie within the orbit of a great city. What it offers instead is compression: in half a day you can taste wine that never leaves Catalonia, walk through vines that smell of rosemary and salt, and be back in Barcelona for supper. Come for the xarel·lo, stay for the pace – and remember to check the train times, because the last R1 to the city leaves El Masnou at 23.12, and the vines won’t mind if you miss it.