The Biologist, the Grandmother's Vines & the Fluorescent Pink Proscrito
A biologist who inherited a forgotten vineyard from his grandmother, restored it from total neglect, and then spent a decade rescuing 28 more abandoned parcels across Valdeorras — Nacho González makes zero-addition island wines from 80-year-old bush vines that the cooperatives called lost, in a tiny cellar where tinajas from Juan Padilla line the walls and sulfur has never been allowed.
Origin — The Grandmother, the Biologist, and the Lost Vineyard
Nacho González was born in Galicia and trained as a biologist. He worked as a fruit and vegetable farmer and gardener on an organic farm in his region, spending his days in soil and his afternoons free. In 2011, his grandmother passed away and left him a small, overgrown, abandoned vineyard in Larouco — a town in the Valdeorras DO, in Spain's northwesternmost corner. The vineyard was called O Trancado. Nacho had memories of making wine there as a child — foot-treading grapes after harvest, the whole family helping, his grandmother selling some grapes and keeping others for the family's yearly supply. He instinctively felt it was his duty to care for it.
He settled permanently in Valdeorras in 2011 to work in biology, but the afternoons were free. He began restoring O Trancado from total neglect — nursing the 80-year-old bush vines back to health through good farming practices and a desire to save the old plants rather than rip them up and replant. His grandmother had always told him the old vines were magnificent. In 2012, he made his first wine: 600 bottles from the recovered parcel. The next year, he acquired a winery that had been closed for years. That was how it began.
The name came from his neighbours. Nacho farmed organically, refused herbicides, and let the grass grow wild and tall between the vines. Other farmers walked past and could barely see the grapes tucked behind the billowing vegetation. They deemed the vineyard "perdida" — lost — and called Nacho "loco" for not spraying. He embraced the insult. La Perdida — The Lost One — became the project's name, a reclaiming of what others saw as failure. The vineyard was not lost. It was found.
Since then, Nacho has accumulated 28 parcels — tiny, hard-to-find, usually sloped and at high altitude, planted to old, low-yielding indigenous varieties that the large wineries ignore. He produces roughly 300 cases a year — a number he is happy with, because it allows him to remain in touch with both his vineyards and his wines. "I will remain an island," he says.
The Place — The Lost Parcels of Valdeorras
Valdeorras is one of the oldest and most storied DOs in Galicia — prized for winemaking since Roman times — but in recent decades it has become a destination for large wineries from Ribera del Duero and Rioja seeking flat land to commercially grow Godello. Nacho works in the opposite direction: further up the hillsides, away from the centre, down winding roads, into the abandoned corners where only bush vines and wild grass remain.
28 Parcels, ~4 Hectares
Nacho farms roughly 4 hectares split into 28 parcels around Larouco and neighbouring villages like Seadur. The parcels are small, steep, and scattered — some on granite, some on clay, some on limestone in hotter areas, some at higher altitude. All are worked entirely by hand. No tractor has ever entered most of them.
80+ Year-Old Bush Vines
The vines are 80 to 100+ years old, bush-trained (gobelet), many on their own rootstock, planted before the wire systems arrived in the 1980s. They yield less than 1 kilogram of fruit per plant. The low yields and old wood produce fruit of unusual concentration and genetic diversity.
Co-Planted Field Blends
Almost all parcels are mixed plantings — Garnacha Tintorera, Palomino, Godello, Doña Branca, Mencía, Mouratón, Merenzao, Sumoll, and Colgadeira growing together in the same row. This was the historical method: risk minimisation and aromatic complexity in one vineyard. Nacho preserves this tradition rather than separating varieties.
Soil Recovery with Mycology
Nacho's primary focus is soil recovery. He wants his vineyard soils to resemble forest soil — alive, biodiverse, self-regulating. He treats the ground with organic compounds, garlic, salix, yarrow, nettle, and experimental fungi and yeast preparations. "Soil is everything," he says. "Plant life begins with healthy soil."
Winemaking — Only Fermented Grape Juice
Nacho's cellar philosophy is absolute: only fermented grape juice. No sulfites, no clarification, no filtration, no added yeasts, no enzymes, no corrections. "It was very clear from the first moment," he says. "Natural work in the vineyard had to have continuity in the winery." He has never used sulfur — not at harvest, not during fermentation, not at bottling. The wines are as raw as the vineyards that produce them.
The cellar is a tiny rented space in Larouco, lined with tinajas — round clay amphorae from Juan Padilla, a fifth-generation potter from Albacete whose vessels are also used at COS and Foradori in Italy. Padilla's tinajas undergo a two-year aging process before sale to ensure they intervene as little as possible. Nacho also uses very old oak barrels and a few stainless steel tanks. The combination gives him a palette of textures: clay for purity, wood for breadth, steel for tension.
For the reds, grapes are hand-harvested, destemmed, and fermented with skins in open-top plastic fermenters for roughly 20 days without temperature control. As fermentation proceeds, Nacho gradually removes the skins by hand until just the must remains about halfway through — a technique that softens extraction while preserving colour and aroma. The wine is then pressed to tinajas or old barrels to rest over winter. For whites, some see skin contact — a few days for O Chaira, six months for O Pando Orange. All wines are bottled without fining or filtration.
The Wines — Island Wines from the Lost Parcels
Each cuvée is named for a vineyard, a concept, or a provocation. The labels are painted by an amateur painter friend who "understands very well what I want to convey with each wine, so he is able to talk about the wine through the art." Production of each wine is tiny — often just a few hundred cases.
O Trancado
Estate red — LaroucoFrom the inherited vineyard that started it all — old Garnacha Tintorera and Mencía vines yielding less than 1kg per plant. Hand-harvested, destemmed, 20 days on skins with gradual removal, then pressed to stainless steel. Plush, expressive, with olive, licorice, earthy blackberry and nervy acidity. The soul of La Perdida.
Proscrito
Chilled red / roséThe fluorescent pink wine that broke the internet — ~95% Palomino and ~5% Garnacha Tintorera from ancient low-yielding vines, co-fermented on skins for 5 days in used barrel, then pressed to chestnut and French oak. Dark plum, kola nut, raspberry lemonade, struck match, and musk. Fine soft tannins, incredibly persistent. A wine that defies category.
A Mallada
Single-vineyard red — SeadurFrom three adjacent parcels of ancient vines on granitic soils near Seadur — roughly 80% Garnacha Tintorera and 20% Sumoll, a Catalan variety brought to Valdeorras 80 years ago. Hand-harvested, destemmed, 20 days on skins with gradual removal, then aged in chestnut and French oak. Suede-like tannins, rich finish, and a wild herbaceous streak.
O Pando / O Pando Orange
White / orange — Godello100% Godello from old, low-yielding adjacent parcels in the Viña do O Pando vineyard. The standard version sees about one week of skin contact in used barrel before pressing to amphora for 4 months. The Orange version sees six months of skin contact in tinaja without stirring. Ripe stonefruit, nectar, baked apple, white flowers and musk. Generous yet tense.
Malas Uvas
Skin-contact white"Bad Grapes" — the union of two varieties hated by conventional managers. Palomino (80%) and Doña Blanca (20%) from old vines, fermented in amphora on skins for six months. Pithy, energetic, grapefruit and spice with thirst-quenching wild acidity. Nacho's middle finger to the Valdeorras DO, which does not permit Palomino.
Meu
Field blend red"Mine" in Gallego — a tribute to close friends and collaborators. A field blend of six grapes from an ancient vineyard being rehabilitated: Mencía, Garnacha, Mouratón, Godello, Doña Blanca and Palomino. Nutmeg, plum, cherry cola, bright and textural with high acid. Generous, lively, and unmistakably Galician.
Legacy — The Bodyguard of the Lost
La Perdida matters because Nacho González is a bodyguard — his own word — for vines that the modern wine industry had sentenced to death. In a region where large wineries rip out old mixed plantings to install flat, high-yielding Godello clones for bulk export, Nacho has saved 28 parcels of genetic diversity: Garnacha Tintorera, Palomino, Mouratón, Merenzao, Sumoll, and Doña Branca — varieties that carry the history of Valdeorras in their DNA. "If this happened, all of the genetic material belonging to the old vines would be lost forever," he says. "Nacho didn't want to let that happen."
His legacy is also scientific. As a biologist, he approaches soil not as dirt but as a living system to be studied and nurtured. His work with fungi preparations, mountain microorganisms, and acidolactic bacteria represents a third way between industrial agriculture and biodynamic mysticism — rigorous, measurable, and rooted in ecology. "Soil is everything," he repeats. "My goal is for the soils of my vineyards to resemble the soil of a forest."
Through wines like Proscrito — the fluorescent pink Palomino that inspired Rajat Parr — and Malas Uvas — the "bad grapes" that the DO refuses to recognise — Nacho has also expanded the vocabulary of what Spanish natural wine can be. He is experimental without being careless, traditional without being nostalgic, and isolated without being lonely. "I will remain an island," he says. But islands, it turns out, can change the coastline.