Inside Katavi: l'Alfàs del Pi's Hidden Wine Gem
Walk through the centre of l'Alfàs del Pi and you might miss it — but step inside Katavi and you'll find shelves of carefully chosen bottles and a team who genuinely love to share them. It's the kind of wine shop every town should have and very few do: small enough that someone actually greets you, serious enough that the bottles have all earned their place on the shelf.
We spend a lot of time in wine shops — vetting places is most of what Vino Days does — and Katavi stood out the first time we walked in. Here's what makes it worth crossing town for, and why we chose it as the home of our flagship tasting.
A shop built around conversation
Some wine shops feel like libraries where you're afraid to touch anything. Katavi is the opposite. The default mode is conversation: what you had last night, what you're cooking this weekend, what you've never dared try. Recommendations come from what you actually enjoy rather than what needs shifting, and nobody minds if you leave with one modest bottle instead of a case.
That sounds like a small thing. It isn't. Wine is intimidating for most people precisely because so much of the trade runs on jargon and judgement, and a shop where questions are welcome is where drinking better actually starts. When we vet a place for Vino Days, this is honestly the first test — before we look at a single bottle, we watch how the room treats someone who admits they don't know what they like yet. Katavi passed before we'd finished introducing ourselves.
What tastings here feel like
Tastings at Katavi are unhurried, friendly and built around what you actually enjoy. There's no lecture, no test at the end, and no assumption that you know your Monastrell from your Moscatel when you sit down — only that you're curious. Glasses get poured, ideas get floated, and somewhere between the first wine and the last the group is arguing happily about whether that smell is cherries or plums. The host steers just enough to keep things moving, and the wines are chosen to make a point you can actually taste — light against full, coastal against inland, familiar against completely new.
It's exactly the atmosphere blind tasting needs. Hiding the label only works when nobody feels foolish for guessing wrong — and at Katavi, wrong guesses are half the entertainment. That's why our guided blind tasting experience is hosted at Katavi: the format and the room fit each other perfectly.
Where you'll find it
Katavi sits in l'Alfàs del Pi, the compact town between Benidorm and Altea that most visitors know for its beach quarter, Albir. The town centre keeps a local, lived-in feel — Norwegian bakeries next to Spanish bars, a Thursday market, and one very good wine shop. From Albir beach or the Altea old town you're ten minutes away; from Benidorm, closer to fifteen.
That location matters for wine, too. This is DO Alicante country — Monastrell reds from the hot inland valleys, Moscatel de Alejandría whites from nearer the coast, and, if you're lucky, the odd bottle of Fondillón, the region's historic aged rarity. A local shop with local knowledge is the shortest route into all of it; our rundown of the five Costa Blanca wines worth seeking out covers what to look for on the shelves.
Make a day of it
A tasting slots neatly into a Costa Blanca day. Morning on Albir's pebble beach or walking the lighthouse path through the Serra Gelada natural park; a long lunch somewhere with rice on the menu; then a gentle hour and a half of wine as the afternoon cools. Altea's whitewashed old town, ten minutes up the coast, is the classic spot to carry the evening on afterwards — its hilltop church square at sunset is the postcard everyone comes home with, and it's a short taxi ride from the shop.
One practical note: tastings involve a fair amount of wine, so plan transport like a grown-up. Taxis are easy to come by, the tram line runs along this stretch of coast, and l'Alfàs del Pi itself is compact enough to explore entirely on foot once you're there. However you arrange it, sort it out before the first glass rather than after the last one — future you will be grateful.
Come and see for yourself
Shops like Katavi are why we started Vino Days: independent, welcoming, quietly excellent places that deserve to be found. You can wander in any time the doors are open — but the best introduction is to pull up a chair, let someone hide the labels, and taste what this corner of Spain does best. Book the blind tasting at Katavi and we'll save you a glass.