The town gets Malvasia de Sitges Week 2025 under way on Thursday, 6 November, at the Malvasia Interpretation Centre at 7 pm (Plaça Joan Duran i Ferret, s/n), with a special edition focusing on the link between this grape variety and art. Because of this, the ambassador for this year’s Malvasia 2025 is the writer Vinyet Panyella, who will be opening the event with the speech ‘Malvasia is heritage. Affirming the three wineries’. The Councillor for Culture, Albert Oliver-Rodés Sen, affirms that “Malvasia is an indelible part of Sitges and we feel very proud that it becomes better known and generates more interest every year”.

The eleventh Malvasia Week is on until 16 November, offering ten days of tastings, pairings, informative meetings, tours and activities based around the native grape variety of Sitges, linked to different artistic disciplines. One of the new aspects is the Festa de la Malvasia, a celebration being held on Sunday 16 November at the Sitges Malvasia Interpretation Centre (CIM), the centre for the activities.

The Sitges writer and cultural researcher Vinyet Panyella will be the ambassador for an edition where art plays a central role. Throughout November it will be possible to visit the CIM to see the ‘Historical Exhibition of Sitges Art 1925-2025. The first narrative of modern art in Sitges’, by the Grup d’Estudis Sitgetans, commissioned by the same Vinyet Panyella. 

With this artist spirit, Malvasia de Sitges is to be paired with music, theatre, gastronomy and visual arts. To this end, new aspects include decorative art workshops with Malvasia tastings, guided tours of the Museu Maricel with degustations, a concert reaffirming night-club culture with a DJ, a literature and Malvasia workshop full of micro accounts, a visual arts workshop to learn how to paint a handmade and hand-stitched paper vase, ready to transform it into a unique piece, and an unusual  experience of toasting workshops with Malvasia, with the teacher and poet Lídia Gàzquez and the professor and jester Antoni Rossell.

Festa de la malvasia

The Festa de la Malvasia is the main new event for 2025, a celebration held on Sunday 16 November and offering the chance to taste over 50 different Malvasia wines, with Malvasias from the Celler l’Hospital, in a day brimming with activities.

Coinciding with the year that Catalonia is the World Region of Gastronomy, the Sitges SDM is holding some unique pairings: throughout November, restaurants and bars in Sitges will be pairing their dishes with Malvasia with “Monemvasia in the glass and on the plate”, with degustations, tastings and pairings by the Sitges Hospitality Guild and Fetén Wines. The DO Penedès Route in Sitges is also taking part in the week, with Malvasia wines and maritime cuisine at the Sitges Eurostars Hotel; a DO Penedès Malvasia tasting with the sommelier Ramon Antich from the Acadèmia Tastavins.

True to its dissemination and research vocation, Sitges Malvasia Week also offers activities aimed at producers, sommeliers, restaurant owners and communicators. The professional fair on 10 November will bring together over 30 wineries offering a chance to try 50 single-variety Malvasia de Sitges wines, with the training capsule “The Malvasia Legend”, given by the INCAVI researcher Enric Bartra and the director of the CIM, Alba Gràcia. Different experts will also be taking part in the round table “Malvasia, beyond sweet wine”.

Records show that Malvasia de Sitges is grown on 125 hectares, most of which (nearly 95%) is in the Penedès area. A significant part is in the Massís del Garraf, giving it its own character. In 12 years the number of wineries that make single-grape varieties of Malvasia de Sitges has grown by 66%, and the number of bottles on the market has increased by 70%.

The Malvasia Interpretation Centre (CIM) guards the legacy of the diplomat Manuel Llopis i de Casdes, who gave the last vines to the Hospital de Sitges to ensure its survival. Malvasia Week is a tribute to everybody who has kept this grape variety alive through history.