The Can Sais Heiress, the One-Hectare Rebellion & the Hand That Needs No Tractor
A woman who grew up in a family of pioneering farmers at the foot of the Gavarres, ran one of Empordà's oldest wineries for decades, and then carved out a personal project of just one hectare and one thousand bottles — Marta Arenas makes FetaMà with nothing but grapes, indigenous yeasts, and her own two hands. No tractor. No sulfites. No compromise.
Origin — From Can Sais to FetaMà, One Woman's Quiet Revolution
Marta Arenas was born in Vall-llobrega, a small municipality at the foot of the Gavarres massif, just three kilometres from the Mediterranean. Her family were pagesos — farmers — and among the most pioneering viticulturists in the comarca. The Arenas family history is intertwined with Celler Can Sais, a winery whose origins stretch back to the late 17th century, making it the oldest in DO Empordà and the only one with continuous family production across more than three centuries.
For decades, Marta ran Can Sais with energy and vision. She was one of the first in the region to embrace wine tourism — long before it was fashionable — offering vineyard visits, tastings, and even routes on horseback through the vines. In 2012, she was already being interviewed as a leading voice of Empordà wine, a rare woman at the head of a historic Catalan cellar. She built a reputation for warmth, knowledge, and wines that spoke of the Baix Empordà's coastal terroir.
But something else was calling. Amid the scale and history of Can Sais, Marta wanted to make wine alone — with her own hands, from her own vines, without additives, without sulfites, without the machinery and compromise of commercial production. She carved out one hectare of old vines — roughly 70 years old — and gave the project a name that needed no translation: FetaMà. Hand made. Artisanal. Hers.
The project is deliberately tiny — around 1,000 bottles a year — and entirely personal. It is not an expansion of Can Sais; it is a retreat from it. A single hectare, a single vigneronne, and a single conviction: that wine needs nothing added but time and attention.
The Place — Where the Gavarres Meet the Sea
Vall-llobrega sits in a pocket of extraordinary beauty — oak forests, Mediterranean scrub, and terraced vineyards at the southern edge of the Gavarres massif, with the beaches of Palamós and Platja d'Aro just three kilometres away. The climate is coastal but moderated by the hills: warm days, cool nights, and the persistent humidity that demands vigilance but rewards patience. The soils are a mix of granitic sand and clay, with the decomposed schist and slate of the Gavarres running through them.
One Hectare, Seventy Years
The entire FetaMà vineyard is a single hectare of 70-year-old vines — old enough to have deep roots, old enough to have survived the rural exodus, old enough to produce fruit of unusual concentration from minuscule yields. Marta tends them alone, by hand, with no mechanical assistance.
No Tractor, No Chemicals
The vineyard is farmed 100% organically with biodynamic influences and regenerative soil practices — though Marta has chosen not to pursue certification. Work is entirely manual, with spontaneous cover crops between the rows and no synthetic treatments of any kind. The only tools are pruning shears, a basket, and patience.
Carinyena, the Empordà's Backbone
The vineyard is planted primarily to Carinyena (Carignan) — the grape that has defined Empordà reds for centuries. On these old vines, with these yields, the variety produces small berries of intense colour, high acidity, and a wild herbaceousness that smells of the garrigue growing between the rows.
Dinners in the Vineyard
Marta opens her hectare to visitors for vineyard breakfasts and lunches from January to April, and vineyard dinners from May to August. The experiences are small, intimate, and rooted in the landscape — not a tasting room but the vines themselves, with local food, local wine, and the sound of the Gavarres wind.
Winemaking — Only Grapes. Only Yeasts. Only Hands.
Marta's cellar philosophy is as absolute as her vineyard work. Only grapes go into the vat. Only indigenous yeasts carry the fermentation. There are no added sulfites, no added yeasts, no enzymes, no oenological products of any kind. The wines are neither fined nor stabilised nor filtered. What the vineyard produces is what the bottle contains — nothing more, nothing less.
This is not minimal intervention as a style choice; it is minimal intervention as a moral position. Marta spent decades at Can Sais learning what wine could be with technique and technology. At FetaMà, she is learning what wine is when all of that is stripped away. The result is raw, alive, and unmistakably honest — wines that carry the vintage, the weather, and the hand of the vigneronne without mediation.
Production is minuscule and variable — roughly 1,000 bottles a year, sometimes a little more, sometimes less, depending on what the vines give. There is no purchasing of external fruit, no blending across vintages, no safety net. Each bottle is a direct line from a single hectare to a single table.
The Wines — Hand Made, Heart Felt, Hectare Bound
The FetaMà range is small by necessity — everything comes from a single hectare, and Marta vinifies only what the vines produce. The wines are all red, all Carinyena, all natural, and all limited to a few hundred bottles per cuvée.
Vermell
Estate red100% Carinyena from the 70-year-old vines — a red of dark berry, wild thyme, and the mineral grip of Gavarres granite. Fermented naturally with indigenous yeasts, aged without additions, and bottled without filtration. A wine that tastes of hand work and coastal wind.
N'Velat
Estate redAnother expression of the same old-vine Carinyena — perhaps from a different parcel or a different picking, vinified with the same zero-addition rigour. The name suggests something veiled or hidden, a wine that reveals itself slowly in the glass. Earthy, herbal, and alive.
Legacy — The Woman Who Did Not Need Scale
Marta Arenas matters because she refused the logic of expansion. At Can Sais, she could have continued building a brand, increasing volume, and chasing markets. Instead, she stepped back — literally, into a single hectare — and proved that the most radical act in modern wine is not growth but restraint. One hectare. One thousand bottles. One pair of hands.
Her legacy is the proof that a woman who has spent decades running one of Empordà's most historic wineries can still choose to make wine the way her great-grandparents might have: by hand, without chemicals, without additives, and without a tractor. The FetaMà project is not a rejection of her past at Can Sais; it is a distillation of it — the essence of a lifetime's knowledge poured into a few hundred bottles a year.
Through her vineyard dinners and breakfasts, Marta has also created a model of wine tourism that is intimate rather than industrial. Visitors do not tour a facility; they sit among the vines, eat local food, drink wine made ten metres away, and listen to a woman who has forgotten more about Empordà viticulture than most will ever know. The future of Catalan natural wine, it turns out, may not be in the big cellars. It may be in the hands of one woman, one hectare, and one ancient variety that has always belonged here.