Los Dulces de Sant Donís: A Valencia valentine tradition

This Sunday, the 9th of October, was "El Día de la Comunidad Valenciana," an important local holiday in Valencia marked by many public celebration events (a mascletà and a parade of the Community flag) as well as occasional outbursts of regional pride and separatist sentiment. I'll probably cover these topics another year. This year I want to mention a particularly lovely tradition that also falls on the 9th of October: the "dulces de Sant Donís," mazapán sweets taking the form of fruit that you can find in your local horno and which are traditionally given as a gift to one's lover. La Mocadorà de Sant Dionís (colloquially call "Sant Donís") is for many Valencians the local equivalent of America's Saint Valentine's or Barcelona's Sant Jordi (for those of you familiar with it), and for the week leading up to it the city's bakeries are decorated with these colorful artisanal delights.

The 9th of October is very important in the history of Valencia because it is the day of the Christian king Jaume I's triumphal entrance into the city of Valencia having defeated the Muslims and removed them from the region in 1238. It is the stuff of local legends, and I'm sure there will be many more opportunities to fill you in on all the myths, traditions, and local iconography that surrounds Jaume I the Conqueror.

The story behind the dulces de Sant Donís is interesting in itself. According to one site, in the 18th century, following the Spanish War of Succession, the Bourbon royal family prohibited the celebrations and especially the use of fireworks surrounding the 9 D'Octubre festivities. As a response to this ban, the local bakers in the city produced sweets using mazapán which took the shape of hand fireworks (petardos), and whose phallic and round forms were also said to evoke male and female sexual organs. The piuleta i tronador, whose nomenclature also has a sexual ring to it, became a classic sweet for men to buy their beloved, often wrapping them in a scarf or "mocador" in Catalán (a.k.a. pañuelo in Spanish) the namesake for the holiday tradition.

The piuleta i tronador surrounded by the "huerta de Valencia".

This valentine tradition is an opportunity for bakeries to flex their artisanal skills
and demonstrate the art of baking.

Alongside these valentine sweets, bakers also made mazapán sweets in the shape of fruits and vegetables, "fruites de massapà" to evoke the fertility of "la huerta de Valencia" (literally the "orchard", but more figuratively the "fertile agrarian region of Valencia"). Legend was that fruits and vegetables had been gifted to Doña Violante de Hungría, the wife of Jaume I, by the people of Valencia when Jaume I entered the city back in the 13th century. Valencians could rebel symbolically against the Bourbon slight on their local traditions by gifting these sweets to each other. And eventually a new tradition was born in parallel with the 9 D'Octubre regional celebrations. Following this tradition, a woman could keep her scarves gifted to her year after year and thereby have a collection marking all the years together with her beloved.

If it's a fruit or vegetable it's healthy for you to eat, right?

Whether or not you're feeling regional pride for Valencia or sentimental affection for your lover, it is difficult to resist these adorable and creative confectionery creations. They're a big hit here in the city. Last year the city's confectioners estimated they used around 40,000 kilos of mazapán to make them. (Addendum: by tradition all the fruites de massapà will taste the same, made from the same mazapán base, except the potatoes and mushrooms which have cinnamon added to them.) So if you walk by a bakery in Valencia the week leading up to 9 D'Octubre, be sure to drop in and buy some. They're as much a visual work of art as culinary joy, quite a treat!

The 44th Sitges Festival Internacional de Cinema Fantàstic

Aerial view of Sitges, site of the film festival

Yesterday was the opening of the 44th Festival Internacional de Cinema Fantàstic in Sitges. Started in 1968, it is one of the two most important film festivals in Spain. The other one is the Donostia Zinemaldia, a.k.a. the San Sebastian International Film Festival. I went there last year and it was pretty fun, but it is a much more standard film festival experience… more serious, more filmic, and with the usual star-gazing. (Though the beautiful Concha beach and delicious pinchos make it a great festival to attend.) The Sitges Festival is a completely different kind of beast, pardon the pun, since it is all about horror film and fantasy, which gives it a much more festive, informal, and even wild atmosphere.  If you are in the area, make your way down to Sitges to catch some of the action. This festival runs until October 16th.

Here I'm just going to give an overview of the festival, and later I'll report back to you about my experiences there. Getting Oriented: Hotel Meliá Sitges is the Festival's "nerve center," were press conferences and interviews take place. Movie screenings take place in one of three theatres. The Auditori, attached to Hotel Meliá, seats 1,384, and is the largest cinema theatre in the Mediterranean. The other two are Cine el Retiro and Cine Prado.

The Auditori movie theater, which seats 1,384, is attached to the Hotel Meliá Sitges,
and is one of three venues where festival films are screened.

"Brigadoon," a festival tradition: screening
sci-fi and horror classics, and free!

With, by my count, over 140 new movies being screened (almost 300 if you count screenings of classic films), the festival is organized around several different categories of movies. The Oficial Fantàstic with an "In-Competition Selection" and a "Panorama Section," are the main competitions, and award films that "traverse various genres, including science-fiction, fantasy innovation, horror and thrillers among other sensations inviting the spectator to see cinema as an unlimited language". Sitges's program is a bit more risqué, encouraging grotesque or disturbing content, and also probably more (non-European) international than most standard film festivals. In recent years it has expanded its "Casa Asia," subcategory of the Oficial Fantàstic Panorama, paying tribute to Asian cinema and its long dominance in sci-fi, horror, and fantasy films. The other major category of films are the Noves Visions, for innovative and transgressive approaches, with "Ficció," "No Ficció," "Discovery," and "Dark Ficció" subsections. There are also special screenings of commercial new-release movies which don't compete for awards but use the festival to raise the profile of their movie.

The official 2011 posters for the Sitges Festival, featuring the theme of "alter egos"

A ninja Harry Potter? The protagonist of
Ninja Kids!!! (2011).

Those are the official categories, the heart and blood of the festival and what make it tick, but not what make it jump. In addition to these official screenings are dozens of crowd-pleasing events intended to liven up the atmosphere and create a more interactive experience for the festival participants. I probably won't make it to one of them, since I don't know that I have the stamina, but easily the coolest festival series are the "Midnight X-treme" screenings: marathon screenings (actually starting a 1AM) running around six hours of movies back-to-back, each with some kind of unifying sci-fi or horror theme. A couple of examples of some fun marathons to attend are "La Nit + Zombie," featuring classic and new zombie movies, and "Japan Madness," showing some new hit karate/anime-style movies just out in Japan (including the adorable-sounding hit movie, Ninja Kids!!! (2011), which I've heard described as Harry Potter meets Japanese ninja school). Though probably 3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy (2011), the Hong Kong 3D porn movie, will be one of the bigger crowd draws, and is also featured in a midnight marathon with other porn and sex-themed movies. Another tradition at the festival are free screenings of movie classics, in two special sections: Sitges Clàssics, where they show old movies that won awards at past Sitges, and Brigadoon, screenings of all-time classics of horror and sci-fi. Recently the festival has also hosted a Zombie Walk, sponsored by Jack Daniel's, I suppose so that festival participants aren't just sitting down in theatres but also get some exercise.

 Official spot for the Jack Daniel's Sitges Zombie Walk 2011

There are a bunch of movies getting buzz as festival highlights this year's. Eva (2011) is a Catalan production about a future with artificially intelligent robots. It was chosen to open the festival in order to mark the 10th anniversary of Spielberg's A.I. (2001). Lars Von Trier's moody Melancholia (2011) and Steven Soderbergh's Contagion (2011) will be given featured screenings. Another movie being played up in the festival press is Guillermo del Toro's Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2010). I'm a big fan of Korea horror films and am therefore very curious about Sector 7 (2011) is getting a lot of positive press. Finally, The Thing (2011), a prequel to the 1982 classic of the same title, is debuting here, is expected to be a big hit, and has been given the honor of closing the festival. I've got tickets to see The Thing, and will also be seeing the Australian movie Sleeping Beauty (2011), a dark, modern-day twist of the classic fairytale, and the Danish film Beast (2010), Christoffer Boe's latest movie. I'm going to decide last-minute if I think I can cram in more movies than that in the 24 hours I'll have in Sitges.

 "Alter ego," the official spot for the 2011 Sitges Film Festival
highlighting the theme of artificial intelligence and robots.

Sitges itself is a picturesque Catalan beachtown, so while there for the festival be sure to leave time to stroll along the beach and see the "casco antiguo" (old town center), including the 17th-century church which along with the old town center juts out into the sea on a small peninsula. You also might want to visit the Cau Ferrat Museum, which was once the summer home of modernist artist and writer Santiago Rusiñol. And apparently Sitges lies on the Xató Route, which means it is a good place to try "xató," an endive salad with a typical Catalán sauce made with almonds and hazelnuts.

The Sitges casco antiguo as seen on a dark and stormy night.

Rice Culture in Valencia. It's More Than Just Paella

So apparently the only famous thing Hemingway ever did in Valencia was eat paella in La Pepica, a restaurant at the city beach. I know this because every guide on the planet (at least written in English) seems to direct tourists there for it. I'm going to resist the urge to rant, and just say that, while the paella at La Pepica is good, it is probably overpriced, flooded with tourists, and hardly the only place to eat this famous Valencian dish.

Hemingway forever consecrating La Pepica in his book, The Dangerous Summer,
as a "must visit" spot for American tourists in Valencia.

What's more, since I live here in Valencia, home to the famous rice dish, I feel obliged to explain that rice culture in this region runs deep, and is not just about paella. Valencians are really big rice eaters in general. Among the dishes you can sample, there are, broadly speaking, at least five different categories of classic rice plates: "paella," "arroz meloso" and "caldoso," "arroz al horno," and "pimientos rellenos" (or stuffed peppers).

Within the "paella" dish spectrum, the most famous variations are:

• "de pollo y conejo" (chicken and rabbit) also called "la paella valenciana" (it sometimes also has "caracoles," or snails)… this is the traditional meat paella [For instructions on how to make it, check out this series of blog entries.]
• "de marisco" (seafood)
• "de verduras" (vegetable paella, which can change with the season, so that in winter, for example, it is nice because it has artichokes hearts).
• "arròs negre" (a rich flavored black paella made with squid ink)
• "a banda" (plain rice cooked in a broth)
• "l'arròs del senyoret" (this is the marisco paella, but with all the shells pealed and removed… thus the name: "rice [prepared] for a lord")

La paella valenciana, as prepared and displayed by my mother-in-law.

But there are many, many more kinds, including some regional twists from towns throughout the Valencian Community. Traditionally, paella is cooked in the "paella" frying pan over an open wood fire ("leña"), though many people cook it at home over a stove flame. There is also a saying that the water in Valencia isn't good for anything except making paella. Indeed, Penelope Casas correctly recounts what most Valencians will tell you, when she writes:

"the local water—dreadful for drinking—seems to have a unique chemical composition that is perfect for rice cookery." — in The Foods and Wines of Spain, p. 174.

Ajoaceite, or "All i oli" in Catalán.

This is why locals say that paella can never taste the same, or as good, as it does in Valencia. (It is very important that you pronounce the double "ll" in paella as a "y" and not an "l" sound... as in "pae-yah.") Be sure to order "ajoaceite," Spain's traditional accompaniment to paella and version of aioli, the typical Mediterranean garlic mayonnaise sauce.

And though they look a lot like paella, the "arroz meloso" and "arroz caldoso" are technically not. These soupier rice dishes are cooked in a slightly deeper pan, the meloso version leaving the rice just slightly moist with caldo (broth), whereas the caldoso is pretty much a rice soup. One truly delicious variation is "arroz meloso con bogavante," which is a soupy rice cooked with a regional lobster.

The classic arroz al horno

Then there is "arroz al horno," also considered an entirely different dish, which is rice cooked in a clay pot (cazuela) in an oven. The most common one has tomato, potato, morcilla (a Spanish blood sausage), garlic, chickpeas, and pork ribs. There are hundreds of variations on this dish, but that is the one you will typically find in restaurants, and I highly recommend it.

Pimiento rellenos, a homemade Valencian staple

And finally there is "pimiento relleno," which is a thick juicy local red pepper stuffed and baked with Valencian rice. This dish is tricky to find in restaurants, but is really delicious, so keep an eye out for it.  The two typical ones are: "de bacalao" (cod), and "de carne" (with ground pork).

The best place to eat paella is naturally at your mom or mother-in-law's house. But if you can't get invited to a local's home, there are other remedies. One is to attend one of the many paella street festivals in the region throughout the year. But in terms of restaurants, for die-hard, true lovers of paella, _the_ place to eat it is El Palmar, a pueblo south of the city and right next to the Albufera lake where the special "arroz de Valencia" rice is grown. Most if not all the "arrocerías" (rice restaurants) there will serve excellent paella, though one that is particularly nice is called Nou Racó (previously El Racó del L'Olla), which has a strong international reputation and is located right on the lake.

A nighttime view of Nou Racó taken from the Albufera lake

The Albufera Park is itself worth a visit (and perhaps a future blog entry). You can reserve a complete visit to the Nou Racó restaurant where you take a ride on one of the shallow (gondola-like) boats over the lake, visit the museum which talks about the park (the largest bird migration spot in southern Europe), and most importantly, have lunch at the restaurant Nou Racó. However, this paella mecca requires either taking a bus or taxi, or having a car.

Arroz caldoso de bogavante

An alternative, also quite nice if you can't get out of the city, would be to go to La Riuà located in the city center (C/ del Mar, 27, 46003 Valencia), which is highly rated by locals. For exquisite arroz meloso, my favorite arrocería is L'Altell (Calle Vinaroz, Avenida Primado Reig, 46020 Valencia). And if it is just more convenient, there is always Hemingway's La Pepica, or La Marcelina another arrocería right next to it. Both have the advantage of being right at the beach, ready to serve lunches on those days you want to tour around the recently renovated port area or lay out on the "Las Arenas" (the sands) city beach. Though I've been told by locals that L'Estimat, another arrocería right there on the beach, makes a better quality paella than the other two heavily-frequented-by-tourists spots.

Oh, and one final piece of advice. People here _always_ have these rice dishes for lunch, _never_ for dinner. It actually struck my wife as odd when one of our visitors once asked if we could do a paella for dinner. Just something to keep in mind.

The Name Game: Composite Names and Saint's Days

I struggle with names whatever country I'm living in, but it is twice as hard to catch a name when you are meeting people and all the names sound unfamiliar. Two helpful tricks, Spanish names:
1) very frequently come from the Bible, and
2) are often compound, which is to say a person has two first names.

It doesn't take long to discover that in Spain, and in fact most Catholic countries, many people have two first names, or more accurately a compound name. This is not quite the same as in the United States, where people have a first and then a "middle name," because in Spain the name order is fixed by tradition (i.e. Juan or José go first). In the U.S. the middle name is really a second, alternative name by which a person can choose to go. While in Spain often the second name (the non Juan, José, or María name) _can_ become a person's used name, some of the second names in Spain could _never_ be used as their stand-alone name, for reasons that will become clear in a moment.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of common compound names, as well as common composites of the names used to distinguish one John or Mary from another:

Men:                                                      Common composites:
José María                                             Josema, Josemari
José Antonio       
José Luis                                                Joselu
José Miguel                                            Josemi
José Ramón
Juan Andrés
Juan Bautista                                         Juanba
Juan Carlos                                            Juanca
Juan David
Juan José                                               Juanjo
Juan Manuel                                          Juanma
Juan Pablo                                             Juanpa
Miguel Ángel

Women:
Ana Belén                                              Anabel
Ana Lucía
Ana María
María José                                             Mariajo
María Isabel                                           Maribel
María de los Ángeles                             Mariángeles
María (del) Carmen                               Maricarmen, Maica
María Eugenia                                       Maru, Maruja
María Cruz                                            Maricruz
María Paz                                              Maipa
María Teresa                                         Maite

So as you can imagine, men don't go by "María" and women wouldn't go by "José," despite having them as a second first name. Morevover, the widespread use of the composite names helps distinguish the many Marías and Juans from each other.

Celebrating one's Saint's Day is also common
in Italy, as this greeting card shows.

One reason for the common occurrence of these biblical names is tied to the Catholic calendar. In the past, one tradition was to name your child after the saint who's Saint's Day corresponded with his or her birthday. (Though much like in most countries all over the world, the most typical source for names are parents or other family members' names.) However, what is more common is for people to be named independently of whatever Saint's day their birthday happens to fall on, and then to celebrate their name day, the "día del santo" or "onomástica" when the saint with the same name is celebrated on the "santoral" (the Catholic calendar of the saints), much like a second, lesser birthday. They might get sweets from their family members, some small token or treated out to some small occasion and made the center of attention. Usually it's nothing special, just one more excuse throughout the year for people to show their affection. Following in this tradition, father's day is aligned with the saint's day of José (adopted father of Christ) on the 19th of March.

A Spanish blogger wrote this nice entry about the most common first and last names in Spain
according to a survey published this past spring.

Two Spains, Many Spains: "Las dos Españas"

"Here lies half of Spain. It died of the other half."

—  Mariano José de Larra, 19th-century Spanish satirist

Stereotypes and simplifications are sometimes a good starting point, but never a good end point. One of the more enduring narratives about Spain is that of "las dos Españas." The phrase comes from an Antonio Machado poem:

Ya hay un español que quiere             There is a Spaniard today, who wants

vivir y a vivir empieza,                         to live and is starting to live,

entre una España que muere               between one Spain dying

y otra España que bosteza.                 and another Spain yawning.

Españolito que vienes                         Little Spaniard just now coming

al mundo, te guarde Dios.                   into the world, may God keep you.

Una de las dos Españas                      One of those two Spains

ha de helarte el corazón.                     will freeze your heart.

— Machado, untitled poem, "LIII," in Proverbios y Cantares, ca. 1910s

For Machado and his left-leaning intellectual peers, dubbed the Generation of '98, one Spain was heavily Catholic, reactionary, and centrist, the other a secular (anti-clerical), progressive, modern and in this sense more post-Enlightenment European Spain.

A 1998 stamp showing the "Generación del 98," a group of novelists,
poets, essayists, and philosophers, among them Antonio Machado

Keep in mind that they were called the Generation of '98 because in 1898 they witnessed Spain's defeat in the Spanish-American War over Cuba. This loss quickly became the symbolic turning point in what would be the end of the Spanish Empire. As Spain entered the 20th century, the deep intellectual question was how it could recapture its political and cultural importance in a modern, industrialized Europe, having previously built its Empire around pre-modern institutions of religious conquest and New World gold.

This was the Spain Hemingway arrived to in the 1920s, a country that hadn't, as he saw it, completely fallen prey to industrialization and modernization. It still had that vitality and pre-modern spirit that Hemingway believed had been suffocated by industrialization and suburbanization in his home country. Machado, on the other hand, believed one Spain was holding the other new Spain back. One can quickly see how all kinds of cultural tensions can get folded into this modernization and anti-modernization story: centrist, imperial Spain (Madrid) versus capitalist, regional Spain (Bilbao, Barcelona); nationalist Spain versus European Spain; Catholic Spain versus secular, Enlightenment Spain… and so on.

Goya's Duelo a garrotazos (Fight with cudgels), painted sometime 1820-23 and likely a
critique of the volatile politics of the court of Fernando VII. The image is evoked by
some today to illustrate the long historical divisions of the Two Spains

My personal philosophy is that, rather than get caught up in local debates about whether one or the other Spain is the "real" Spain, it's useful to see this dualism as a core dynamism in Spanish culture, for better and for worse. Though as I will discuss in a periodic series of blog entries which I'll call, "Two Spains, Many Spains," even the notion of two Spains doesn't adequately capture the rich pluralism of Spain's many cultures and peoples today.

Penedés: Wine Country

Spain's wines are becoming increasingly popular in the United States, and for good reason. Spain produces some excellent wines, and unlike France and Italy, whose international reputations and image marketing have led to sticker shock and high pricing of its bottles abroad, Spain exports wines at comparatively low prices that make drinking them not only gustatorily satisfactory but also quite financially appealing. Indeed, in Spain wine is consumed as an ordinary accompaniment to one's meal, not a luxury item, and is thus priced very inexpensively.

(Evidence by way of personal anecdote: when I once tried to buy my in-laws a "nice and expensive" bottle of wine, my mother-in-law fussed about not being excessive in purchasing a 10€ bottle, and insisted that splurging on a 5€ bottle was more than fancy enough. For routine drinking, one need not spend more than 3€ here in Spain for a good wine.)

While there are wine regions all throughout Spain, the two most reputed wine regions are La Rioja and Penedés. Between the two, La Rioja is the region with the longest tradition and greatest fame, but the two regions have equal status here in part because of their specialization in product. La Rioja produces mostly "tinto," red wines, while Penedés is reknowned for its "vino blanco" (white wine) and "cava," Spain's version of sparkling wine (or what in France is called champagne).

Spain's many wine producing regions, though La Rioja and Penedés are among its most prestigious

There is too much to say about wine culture in Spain, about production, variation, and its mark on the culture and landscape of the country (the so-called "cava wars," "denominación de origen" labeling rules, whether it is an alcoholic drink or really an accompaniment to one's meal). I promise to return to these topics in future blog entries. Here I just want to focus on Penedés, having recently spent a weekend there touring the vineyards. Penedés is a comarca, a county, of Cataluña located along the coast to the southwest of Barcelona. It is an ancient viticulture region, with vines found in the area dating back to before the 4th Century BC brought there by the Greeks, though the region's importance in wine markets really got going in the 6th Century AD and onward.

Question: What are the three grape varietals used in cava?
Answer: Parellada, Macabeu, and Xarel•lo.

Starting in the late 19th Century, producers in the region started specializing in "cava." The shift was partly a response to the phylloxera plague, a pest which ruined grape vines all across Europe and nearly caused Europe's wine production to collapse. What is cava? I have for a long time said that cava is more or less exactly the same as champagne, except that the French won't let anyone else call it that. However, I was mistaken. Cava is made from three white grape varieties common to the Penedés region: Parellada, Macabeu, and Xarel•lo. These are not the same as the grapes used in champagne (which for those of you curious are generally the white Chardonay and the the red wine grapes of Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier). (See here for a more in depth blog entry on grape cultivation in Spain. Interesting fact: 94% of grapes cultivated in Spain are destined for wine production, only 6% for table consumption.) So my new take on this is that cava is _better_ than champagne, and in the U.S. you can usually find bottles of it for cheaper. Unlike wine, cava has two fermentation steps, the first fermentation is done with all wines to convert the sugars into alcohol via yeast, but then a second partial fermentation is done, after more sugar liqueur is added, which results in the bubbly final product. What is most interesting about this is that the bottle sold is the same bottle in which this second fermentation takes place!

"Vendimia" season in Penedés. Trucks line up at the Segura Viudas Cava Bodega
in mid September to deliver grapes from nearby vineyards.

September is when the "vendimia" (grape harvesting) takes place, and was thus a very fun time to visit the region and do some enotourism. You could see trucks bringing grapes from the fields to the "bodegas," wine cellars, where producers bottle next year's wine or cava. The two wine producing capitals of the region are Vilafranca and Sant Sadurní d'Anoia. Vilafranca del Penedés is renowned for its culinary excellence (and also its Castellers, or the local association dedicated to staging human towers, surely the subject of a later entry). While there, I highly recommend dining at Cal Ton, widely considered to be the finest or one of the finest restaurants in the city. The town also has a "ruta modernista" (Modernist route) with some interesting buildings; interesting, though not quite the same level as you'd find in Barcelona. More impressive for vino-philes is the "Vinseum," the Penedés Wine Museum. It has an innovative museum format, with interactive displays and poses questions rather than answers, though you will certainly leave it knowing much more about the region's wine, culture and history than when you entered. Very importantly, the museum gives you a wine tasting with your entrance fee.

The more interactive display style of the Vinseum in Vilafranca del Penedés

Recognize this bottle?
That's because Freixenet produces
90 million bottles a year, exporting
a large percent to the United States

Sant Sadurní d'Anoia also has wines, but its name is more synonymous with cava. Most of the famous cavas are located here. The two biggest producers Cordoníu and Freixenet, which Americans might recognize since they export large amounts to the States, offer great tours. Freixenet's tour focuses more on the production and its massive bodegas, whereas Cordoníu's tour highlights its modernist buildings and beautiful layout. Again, both tours end with a cava tasting. I recommend you combine a tour of at least one of these large producers with a visit to one of the many smaller wine or cava producers in the area, since they will give you a better tour of the actual fields and vineyards to compliment the big producers' focus on fermentation and bottling. One (of many) options is Segura Viudas, one of my personal cava favorites and which offers a more intimate tour. While a member of the "Freixenet group," it produces its own distinct wines and cavas and is located about 10 minutes outside of Sant Sadurní d'Anoia along a road that winds through breathtaking views of vineyards and a very distinctive Penedés landscape.

The Segura Viudas bodega and the rolling hills and vineyards of Penedés, wine country