The Brats, the 12th-Century Manor & the Impossible Slopes
Three friends — a Gredos-trained winemaker, his university partner, and an astro-physicist heir to a medieval manor — who recovered abandoned north-facing vineyards too steep for tractors and too wild for the DO. Fedellos do Couto makes co-fermented, whole-cluster Atlantic wines from granite and schist terraces that the conventional world had written off.
Origin — From Gredos to the Bibei, via Defiance
Curro Bareño grew up in Méntrida, in the Sierra de Gredos, where his grandmother kept vineyards and where he met Daniel Landi — "essentially in the cradle," as he puts it, since their families had known each other for years. He studied agriculture at the Universidad Internacional de La Rioja, specialising in environmental studies and bodega management, and initially refused to become a winemaker. "I thought, no — if Dani is doing this, then I'm not going to go into the wine business." A teacher intervened, took him under his wing, and Curro's defiance slowly dissolved into obsession.
At university he met Jesús Olivares, and the two became inseparable. After working together at Ronsel do Sil — one of Ribeira Sacra's most heralded estates — for nearly three years, they knew they had to strike out alone. "We really wanted to emancipate ourselves," Curro says. Meanwhile, Luis Taboada, an astro-physicist whose family had owned the Pazo do Couto — a 12th-century manor in the Val do Bibei — had returned to his roots to reclaim the ruined family house and make wine. The three converged. Luis offered space in his cellar. Curro and Jesús offered their hands and their vision. In 2011, Fedellos do Couto was born.
The name is a wink. Fedellos translates roughly as brats or young troublemakers — a fitting moniker for a trio whose mission was to shake up the Galician status quo. Their first vintage was 2013, and they have been expanding ever since — not by buying flat land, but by recovering the abandoned, north-facing, impossibly steep vineyards that big bodegas would never touch.
The Place — The Val do Bibei, Where the DO Ends
The Val do Bibei is a remote, forested, steep valley that forms the boundary between Ribeira Sacra and Valdeorras — a narrow corridor of granite, schist, and sand that was largely abandoned after the damming of the Sil and Miño rivers and the rural exodus to the cities. The Fedellos work in the southeastern corner of Ribeira Sacra, between the Ribeiras do Sil and Quiroga-Bibei, on north- and east-facing terraces that miss the full sun of the Golden Mile. The result is lighter, higher-acid, lower-alcohol wine — and a landscape too steep for tractors, too wild for corporations.
North-Facing, East-Facing, Abandoned
The Fedellos deliberately sought out the neglected vineyards — those with northern and eastern exposures, randomly planted with mixed varieties, difficult to farm and difficult to reach. "When you get to Bibei, it's a pretty abandoned area," Curro says. Many of the vines they recovered were untended for years, requiring serious TLC before they could produce again.
Granite, Schist, and Sand
The soils are a patchwork of decomposed granite, schist, and sand — poor in nutrients, excellent for vine stress, and utterly unsuited to mechanised agriculture. The Fedellos have mapped the four distinct soil types of the region, collecting samples and matching varieties to sites with the rigour of scientists and the intuition of farmers.
Too Steep for Tractors
Every vineyard is worked by hand — no tractors, no machines, no shortcuts. The terraces are so steep that footing is precarious and harvest is done on foot with baskets. This is why the big bodegas stay away: "For one of these bodegas to be interested, you have to be able to cultivate the land with a tractor." The Fedellos see this isolation as freedom.
Outside the DO
After years of their wines being deemed atypical by the Ribeira Sacra DO, Curro and Jesús withdrew the project from the appellation. They now bottle as Vino de España, having merged their exploratory Peixes project into Fedellos. The move allows them to fine-tune their winemaking without fear of homogenisation — and to work vineyards upstream in the Bibei headwaters that fall outside any DO boundary.
Winemaking — Minimal Intervention, Maximum Vineyard
The Fedellos call themselves minimal interventionists at heart, but their minimalism begins in the vineyard, not the cellar. "Our point of view is to work naturally in the vineyards, and most of our work is done there," Curro says. They farm organically with biodynamic influences — horsetail teas, compost, observation — and apply what Curro learned from two months in a bodega about using fewer resources and creating better energy for agriculture.
In the winery, the approach is equally spare. Grapes are hand-harvested and left whole-cluster. Fermentation is spontaneous, relying solely on indigenous yeasts. Macerations are long and gentle — 40 to 60 days in concrete or small fermentation bins — with periodic pigeage. Aging happens in neutral French oak barrels, foudres, and concrete, mainly 500L demi-muids. The wines are bottled unfined and unfiltered. The only addition is a small amount of sulfites at bottling.
The co-fermentations are central to the Fedellos identity. In the old vineyards of Bibei, red and white varieties are mixed together randomly — Mencía beside Godello, Bastardo beside Doña Blanca — a traditional agricultural strategy that the Fedellos preserve rather than correct. "For us, it had everything — the purity of old vineyards, and the cultural integrity of the area."
The Wines — Co-Fermented, Whole-Cluster, Unmistakably Galician
The range is compact and site-specific — reds from recovered old vines, whites from field blends, and single-varietal expressions that prove forgotten grapes deserve attention. All share an Atlantic freshness and a slatey minerality that could only come from the Bibei.
Lomba dos Ares
Village red — Val do BibeiCurro and Jesús's village wine from their oldest and steepest vineyards on the west bank of the Bibei. A natural yeast co-fermentation of Mencía, Bastardo, Caiño Tinto, Negreda, Garnacha Tintorera, Aramón and others from vines averaging 70 years old. Ten months in neutral 300–500L French oak.
Bastarda
Single-varietal red100% Bastardo — known as Merenzao in Valdeorras and Trousseau in the Jura — a variety from the Alpine foothills that produces light, elegant, silky reds. Pale in colour, with supple red cherries and plums, fine-grained texture, and real poise. 12% alcohol. Thrilling and smashable.
As Xaras
Single-varietal red100% Mencía from the villages of Chandoiro and Larouco in the Val do Bibei, at 500–600 metres elevation on 20-year-old vines. Hand-harvested, whole-cluster, native yeast fermentation. A purer, more direct expression of Mencía than Lomba dos Ares — red fruit, slate, and Atlantic breeze.
Cortezada
Estate redA red from the Cortezada vineyards — another recovered parcel in the Fedellos constellation. Co-fermented, whole-cluster, aged in neutral oak. The exact blend shifts with the vintage, but the signature remains: light colour, high acidity, and the mineral grip of Bibei granite.
Conasbrancas
Field blend whiteA field blend of primarily Godello with Doña Blanca, Albariño, Treixadura, Lado, and Torrontés from 60–80-year-old vines on granite, slate, and sand. Hand-harvested, 70% whole-cluster, natural yeast co-fermentation in barrel with 40 days of skin contact. Textured, saline, and alive.
Peixes da Estrada
Village red — upper BibeiFrom vineyards in Fornelos de Filloás, Grixoa, and Buxán — further upstream, closer to the headwaters of the Bibei, outside the DO boundaries. Curro and Jesús consider this their village wine for the upper valley: Mencía-based, co-fermented, and raised with the same minimalist rigour as the estate wines.
Legacy — Recovering What the Dams Drowned
Fedellos do Couto matters because they chose the hard way. In a region where the damming of the Sil and Miño rivers transformed valleys into lakes, changed microclimates, and triggered a rural exodus that left only the sunniest, driest, most tractor-friendly vineyards in cultivation, Curro, Jesús, and Luis looked to the abandoned north faces — the too-cool, too-steep, too-mixed sites that conventional wisdom had written off.
Their legacy is the proof that co-fermentation of randomly mixed varieties — red and white together, in no particular order, as the old farmers planted them — can produce wines of finesse rather than rusticity. That Bastardo (Trousseau) can make a 12% alcohol red as silky as anything from the Jura. That leaving the DO is not a surrender but a liberation. And that three brats with a 12th-century manor and a stubborn refusal to use tractors can build one of the most exciting projects in modern Galicia.
Through their work, they have also redrawn the map of Ribeira Sacra — extending it upstream into the Val do Bibei, across the boundary into Valdeorras, and into the upland scattered vineyards where hardwoods and pines surround ancient terraces. "We'd have to clone ourselves to be able to do all of the things we'd like to do," Curro says. But even without cloning, the Fedellos have done more than most — and the Bibei is better for it.