The Mother, the Garage & the Art of Being Different
A family that has made wine for nearly 200 years in a stone garage a few hundred metres from the Atlantic — Constantina Sotelo and her son David Bugallo Sotelo farm 35+ tiny parcels of granitic soils by hand, use nettle infusions and garlic broth in the vineyard, and vinify in an impossible array of vessels (tinajas, concrete eggs, porcelain amphorae, micro glass spheres, chestnut barrels) with zero sulfur, zero filtration, and zero patience for the DO rules that would force them to inoculate and filter.
Origin — Four Generations, One Garage, and the Woman Who Said No
The Sotelo family's relationship with wine began four generations ago — not as a commercial enterprise, but as a matter of survival and tradition. For nearly 200 years, they made wine in a small stone building in Castrelo, a parish on the outskirts of Cambados in the heart of the Salnés Valley. The wine was for the family table, for neighbours, for local sale. To this day, some of their clients are descendants of those original buyers — a lineage of trust that spans centuries.
In the 1980s, Constantina Sotelo began to take personal charge of the family vineyards. She was not a trained enologist. She was a woman with calloused hands, an intuitive understanding of her land, and a refusal to let the family's vines be swallowed by the industrialisation of Rías Baixas. In 1999, with the support of her family, she founded the winery officially so that the wine could be labelled under the protection of the DO Rías Baixas. For a decade, she played by the rules. But the rules, she discovered, were not made for wine like hers.
By 2010, Constantina had reached a breaking point. The DO required filtration. It required lab-bred yeast. It demanded a homogeneity that stripped the wine of its soul. "This protection was a toll on our wines, and a burden because it did not allow us to produce other wines outside the norm," her son David would later explain. So they walked away. They abandoned the DO entirely and began producing natural wines without intervention — outside the appellation, outside the rules, and outside the market trends that had turned Albariño into a global commodity.
The project is now a true family collaboration. Constantina remains the heart and the moral centre, but her son David Bugallo Sotelo has become the public face — the articulate, entertaining host who leads visitors through the garage cellar with a warmth that disarms even the most jaded wine critic. Together, they have transformed a modest family holding into one of the most singular natural wine projects in Spain — all from a bodega that occupies, as they put it, "only a few square metres."
The Place — Granite, Salt Air, and 35 Small Acts of Defiance
Castrelo sits in the Salnés Valley, the coolest and most Atlantic of Rías Baixas's five subzones, a few hundred metres from the ocean and the Ría de Arousa. It is a landscape of smallholdings — tiny, scattered parcels of old vines trained on granite pergolas, separated by stone walls and narrow lanes. The Sotelo family manages more than 35 small parcels across roughly 4 hectares, each with its own exposure, its own microclimate, its own character. Some have been in the family for generations. Others have been recovered from abandonment, cleared by hand, and brought back to life.
Granitic Soils, Decomposed & Alive
The soils are granitic — sandy, free-draining, and poor in organic matter, forcing the vines to struggle and concentrate their energy in the fruit. In some parcels, the granite has decomposed into a fine, mineral sand that glitters with mica. In others, a spring of water runs beneath the surface, keeping the roots cool even in the heat of August. The Maruxo parcel, for instance, sits on decomposed granite with a spring underneath — a tiny 0.2-hectare plot that produces one of the estate's most profound wines.
A Fonte — Caiño from 1940
Among the family's treasures is A Fonte — a minuscule vineyard of Caiño planted in 1940 in A Balada (Castrelo), covering just 0.13 hectares on granitic soil. These ungrafted, bush-trained vines are a living archive of pre-industrial Galician viticulture, producing tiny quantities of red grapes that find their way into the family's rarest and most experimental cuvées.
Nettles, Garlic & Horsetail
All vineyard work is manual. No herbicides. No pesticides. No chemical fertilisers. Instead, the family has resurrected traditional plant-based treatments: infusions of nettles, garlic broth, horsetail, propolis, and diatomaceous earth. These are not biodynamic affectations. They are the practical, low-cost methods that Galician farmers used for generations before agrochemicals arrived — and they work.
The Atlantic at the Doorstep
The vineyards lie just a few hundred metres from the Atlantic, close enough to taste the salt in the air. The maritime influence is relentless: cool, humid breezes, persistent mist, and a freshness that pervades everything. This is not the warm, sheltered interior of Galicia. This is the raw edge of Green Spain, where the ocean dictates the calendar and the wines carry its signature in every glass.
Winemaking — Nothing Added, Nothing Taken Away
Constantina Sotelo's cellar philosophy is absolute and non-negotiable: "Nothing added or taken away. 100% fermented grape juice." Indigenous yeasts only. No filtering. No stabilisation. No SO₂ — not at harvest, not during fermentation, not at bottling. The wines are as raw and transparent as the vineyards that produce them, and the family makes no apology for it.
The choice of vessel is determined entirely by the wine itself, not by fashion or formula. For some Albariños, stainless steel provides the clean, saline frame they need. For others, chestnut barrels lend a spicy, oxidative breadth that oak would mask. Skin-macerated Albariños ferment and age in clay amphorae. The essence of century-old vineyards is preserved in porcelain stoneware amphorae. Experimental lots go into concrete eggs, terracotta eggs, or even micro spherical glass tanks — a laboratory of textures housed in a family garage.
Constantina is driven by Albariño and its relationship to the soil, but she refuses to be limited by it. She plays with skin maceration, ageing under flor, lees contact, and oxidative development. She makes reds from Caiño and Espadeiro. She makes sparkling wines. She bottles on the waning moon. Each decision is taken with the same simplicity with which the vines are farmed — intuitively, seasonally, without haste.
"We have no hurry," she says. "We respect the natural rhythm of each process, understanding that each vintage is unique." This patience is radical in a region where most producers rush their Albariño to market within months of harvest. Some of her wines rest for years before release, evolving in silence until they are ready to speak.
The Wines — El Arte de Ser Diferente
The portfolio is a moving target — Constantina and David vinify parcel by parcel, vintage by vintage, vessel by vessel, with no fixed recipe. What follows is a snapshot of the cuvées that have emerged from the garage, each one a singular expression of a specific moment, soil, and intuition. Production is tiny; many cuvées number fewer than 1,500 bottles.
Rosalía
Entry-level Albariño — CastreloThe calling card — 100% Albariño from 30-year-old vines, hand-harvested into 15kg crates and aged on the lees in stainless steel. Fresh, vibrant, and profiled with bright acidity. Aromas and flavours intertwine between tropical and citrus fruits and saline minerality, with a lively texture that makes it dangerously drinkable. The wine David recommends with grilled tuna. The purest, most accessible introduction to the Sotelo universe.
Volandeira
Amphora-aged AlbariñoOrganic Albariño, hand-harvested, direct-pressed, and fermented with indigenous yeast in amphora vessels where it ages for 9 months. The clay imparts a textural breadth and a faint oxidative nuttiness that steel cannot replicate. More savoury and architectural than Rosalía — a wine of salinity, dried herbs, and slow-releasing mineral tension. Proof that Albariño, when given time and the right vessel, can achieve a complexity that rivals the great whites of the Jura or Santorini.
Maruxo
Single-parcel Albariño — A FonteFrom a tiny 0.2-hectare parcel on decomposed granite with a spring of water running beneath. Direct pressing at low pressure in a pneumatic press, then a must maceration of approximately three years until spontaneous fermentation begins — an almost absurd act of patience. Fermentation and ageing occur in a concrete egg for 11 months, with no racking; the wine rests on its original lees throughout. Bottled during the waning moon. Only 1,025 bottles. The analysis reads like a natural wine manifesto: pH 3.27, acidity 6.8, free SO₂ 3mg/L, total SO₂ 5mg/L, sugar 1g/L. In the glass it is taut, saline, and almost painfully pure — a wine that seems to have been filtered through granite and time itself.
Dama Xoana
Limited Albariño — CastreloA very limited edition Albariño, bottled on the waning moon. In the mouth it is broad, silky, and tense, with marked sapidity and a light bitterness that prolongs the finish. This is Constantina at her most precise — a wine that demands attention rather than thirst. David pairs it with atún a la plancha (grilled tuna), and the combination makes sense: both are muscular, saline, and deceptively elegant. Extremely limited availability.
80/20 Sin Más
Red field blend — CastreloA defiantly non-Albariño cuvée that the DO would never permit: 80% Espadeiro and 20% Caiño Tinto — two red varieties historically grown in the Salnés Valley before the white monoculture took over. Fresh, vibrant, with profiled acidity, highly aromatic, and light memories of lees ageing. It is a wine that tastes like the Galicia of Constantina's grandparents: red, Atlantic, and unapologetically rustic. The name says it all: 80/20, nothing more.
Sparkling & Experimental Cuvées
Pet-nat and ancestral methodsThe Sotelo garage is a laboratory of constant experimentation. Depending on the vintage, Constantina and David release small lots of ancestral-method sparkling wines — pet-nats and bottle-fermented wines made from Albariño, Caiño, or field blends. These are not polished Champagne-style wines. They are cloudy, vigorous, and joyfully irregular — the kind of wines that explode with foam when opened and taste like the Atlantic in mid-storm. Quantities are microscopic and availability is erratic.
Legacy — The Art of Being Different
Micro Bodega Constantina Sotelo matters because it is a living refutation of everything that industrial wine has become. In a region where Albariño is produced in factory-scale quantities, filtered to sterility, inoculated with laboratory yeast, and marketed as a homogeneous "crisp white," Constantina has spent three decades proving that the same grape, grown on the same granite, can produce wines of astonishing diversity and depth — if you are willing to wait, to experiment, and to refuse the rules.
Her legacy is methodological. By working with 35+ tiny parcels, vinifying each separately, and choosing vessels according to the wine's character rather than market expectation, she has created a model of parcel-by-parcel natural winemaking that is virtually unique in Rías Baixas. The garage cellar — with its tinajas, concrete eggs, porcelain amphorae, chestnut barrels, and micro glass tanks — is not a marketing prop. It is a working laboratory where four generations of practical knowledge collide with relentless curiosity.
Her legacy is also political. By walking away from the DO in 2010, Constantina joined a growing movement of Galician producers who refuse to let bureaucratic regulations dictate how wine should be made. The DO's loss was the natural wine world's gain: a producer of extraordinary purity, working with zero sulfur, zero filtration, and zero compromise, who cannot legally call her wine Albariño or Rías Baixas despite being one of the most authentic voices of the region.
And her legacy is familial. In an era of celebrity winemakers and venture-capital-backed "projects," Constantina Sotelo is a reminder that the greatest wines often come from the smallest places — from a mother and son working a few hectares of family land, selling to neighbours whose grandparents bought from their grandparents, making decisions not for Instagram or scores but for the simple, stubborn reason that this is how it has always been done, and this is how it should be done.
"El arte de ser diferente" — the art of being different — is not a slogan. It is a practice. It is the three-year maceration of a must until fermentation begins spontaneously. It is the bottling on a waning moon. It is the refusal to add sulfur to a wine that the world expects to be sterile. It is the courage of a woman in her garage, a few hundred metres from the Atlantic, making wine that speaks for itself.