Our story
Four decades looking after the family vineyards.
The story begins four decades ago, when Samuel López and Adela Folgueral took over the vineyards they had inherited. These vineyards had supported their ancestors through the sale of bulk wine and grapes to small local customers.
From the start of this new stage, the way the vineyards were farmed changed, seeking a better balance in production to meet the growing demand for quality that came with the arrival of new wineries in the area. Since then the goal has been excellence through Mencía and Godello, El Bierzo's most emblematic native varieties.
Over the years, the family brought together around seven hectares of Mencía and other native varieties, mostly in three sites in Valtuille de Abajo, by buying and exchanging neighbouring plots.
In 1993 a plot was planted with Chardonnay and Mencía on the heights of "El Toral", near the Castro de la Ventosa: the family's only newly planted, wire-trained vineyard.
In the following years, production focused on traditional, environmentally respectful and balanced viticulture, especially in the old vineyards, which had been over-cropped for the bulk wine market. The family chose to plough the land and change the pruning to meet the growing demand for quality grapes from the wineries in the area for their new wines.
The main customers became the local wineries and winemakers, who were supplied year after year with grapes from specific plots showing the typical qualities of the variety and the terroir.
Our grandfather's winery
In 2013 the sons, Héctor and Víctor, decided to restore the old winery where their grandfather used to make his wines, in order to start making the family's own wines. That same year they began making the single-vineyard wine "La Fontiña de Nai" as a personal project; those first tiny vintages were never released.
Over the next three years the restoration of the winery and part of the house in Valtuille was completed, and it was equipped with its first stainless steel tanks and 228-litre French oak barrels to age the first wines.
From 2016, two hectares of old, abandoned vineyards were acquired in Villalibre de la Jurisdicción, with the aim of recovering the Mencía and obtaining Godello to make wines with a different profile: around 900 metres of altitude, a southern aspect, a 30% gradient and clay and slate soils.