The Grape Fanatic, the Blue Moon & the Island of Firsts
In a tiny celler in the village of Selva, at the foot of Mallorca's northern mountains, Carlos Rodríguez Furthmann makes ~17,000 bottles a year the way he wants to — spontaneous fermentations of Premsal, Gorgollassa, Giró Ros, Escursac and Malvasía, nothing added but a whisper of sulphur, nothing certified but "Product of Spain." He made the island's first pet-nat, its first orange wine, its first clarete — and he gave Premsal, the grape everyone said could never carry a wine on its own, its dignity back.
Origin — A Viticulturist's Cellar, a Rented Cave & "My Way"
Carlos Rodríguez Furthmann is a Mallorcan viticulturist through and through. He grew up tending his father's table grapes, then spent more than twenty years working the vineyards of Mallorca at every level — pruning, green harvesting, hand picking, water management — for other people's wineries. Island viticulturists still call him for help, all year round. For two decades he did what he was told: added commercial yeasts, filtered, adjusted acidity, corrected. He knows every one of those processes intimately. And when the time came to make his own wine, he refused nearly all of them.
In 2015, Carlos and his wife Bárbara found their place: a friend's licensed but idle celler in the village of Selva, in the island's interior plain at the foot of the Sierra Norte. They rented it for five years, moved in among two big tanks and almost no machinery, and started from nothing. 2016 brought the first five wines — five monovarietals of Gorgollassa, Merlot, Malvasía, Tempranillo and Callet — and 2017 was the decisive year, when real production began. With Reg Ward, a New Zealander who became partner and social manager, Selva Vins became a family operation in the most literal sense: Bárbara selects grapes, corks, labels and "dresses" the bottles, and bottling day — every bottle sealed, corked, labelled and wax-dipped by hand, at roughly an hour per bottle — is a family event.
The founding gesture is a refusal, repeated calmly ever since. Carlos is not part of any Denominación de Origen, any wine association, or any certification — except the words "Product of Spain" on the label. He was initially certified Vi de la Terra de Mallorca, but in 2019 he had a wine of naturally low acidity — around 4% — that he didn't want to touch. The regulation demanded 4.5%. The fix was tartaric acid, a bagged powder added to nearly every red on the island. Carlos said no, and gave up the certification willingly. As he tells it with a twinkle: "I make my wines my way." He does not even call himself a natural winemaker — though he meets virtually every requirement of the definition intrinsically.
What he will tell you, without any twinkle at all, is what the project is for: "They talk about my land, Mallorca." Every wine is an argument that the island's own grapes — despised, dismissed, nearly extinct — can carry wines of character with nothing added and nothing corrected. In a place where the local wisdom was that Premsal needed Chardonnay or Muscat to be worth bottling, Carlos spent twenty years hearing that cantinela and decided to prove it wrong.
The Grapes — An Island-Wide Patchwork & the Rescue of the Lost
Selva Vins owns almost no vineyards — yet. Carlos and Bárbara buy certified-organic grapes from farmer friends all over the island: Premsal from a young vineyard near Felanitx, Malvasía from Pollença, parcels scattered across the island's patchwork of smallholdings. Carlos, the viticulturist, controls the entire growing process of everything he buys — the same farmers have worked with him for years. And on a small plot in Estellencs, on the island's wild west coast, he is planting and grafting his own vines: a personal project that will, in a few years, give Selva Vins its first estate fruit. Everything will be organic. There will be no certificate — the bureaucracy is not his way.
Gorgollassa — Thirteen Years from Three Plants
The most planted red grape on Mallorca before phylloxera — and thought extinct. In 2000, three plants were found on a private property in Inca. The Ribas winery drove the recovery, and after thirteen years of breeding, testing and certification, Gorgollassa could once again be produced commercially. Selva Vins was among the producers pushing the process. Carlos describes the grape with a lover's precision: a very long opening — the bottle is often better the next day — with notes of madroño and endrina (strawberry-tree fruit and sloe), violets, pink pepper, smoke, black earth, mushrooms, and with air, mountain herbs like salvia. It is his favourite variety, and the soul of the range.
Premsal — The Grape That Couldn't, Then Did
All his life, Carlos was told 100% Premsal would never work — that it was a filler grape, low in sugar, rarely reaching 12% alcohol, lacking structure, needing Chardonnay or Muscat to be worth anything. Premsal is simple, he agrees: pear and fennel, not much more. But simplicity treated with respect becomes clarity. Selva Vins now makes three Premsals — a pure stainless-steel version, one aged in chestnut, and an orange wine — and Carlos is unabashedly proud: "I think I have given dignity to the Premsal."
Giró Ros & Giró Negre — Siblings, Separated by a Century
Giró Ros — actually a white grape despite the name — makes a more complex wine than Premsal: honey, herbs, grapefruit, naturally 14–15% alcohol. Its dark-skinned sibling Giró Negre was not approved for commercial production on Mallorca until 2023, after more than a decade of breeding and support in which several island wineries, Selva Vins among them, pushed the certification forward. Even Escursac took seven years to be approved. Each recovered variety is a small act of island archaeology — and a rebuttal of the idea that Mallorca's wine future lies with international grapes.
Manto Negro, Callet & the Truth About "Native"
Carlos delights in demolishing received wisdom. Manto Negro — now marketed as Mallorca's flagship indigenous red — was barely planted before phylloxera, he insists; it is a relatively young grape, bred from crosses of Fogoneu and other locals for post-phylloxera resilience. The truly old varieties are Callet, Giró Negre, Gorgollassa and Premsal. He likes Callet but doesn't love it; Manto Negro appears in his range only in vintages when the grapes are great — "this grape in this year" is the whole philosophy. Everything else is marketing.
Winemaking — Nothing Added, Nothing Corrected, Nothing the Same
The protocol at Selva Vins fits in a sentence: spontaneous fermentation, nothing added except a small final dose of sulphur, nothing filtered, nothing clarified. All fermentations run on the indigenous yeasts living on the grape skins. At the end, Carlos generally adds 20 to 30 grams of sulphites per hectolitre for bottle stability — against the conventional allowance of roughly 200 grams for whites and 180 for reds. He adds no commercial yeast, no enzymes, no acidity correctors, no sugar. The wines are never fined, never filtered. Some cuvées receive no additions at all.
Refusing the acid bag is the philosophical core. To be certified Vi de la Terra, a wine must reach 4.5% acidity; most Mallorcan wineries get there with tartaric acid. Carlos had a wine at 4%, natural and beautiful, that he refused to touch — and walked away from the certification rather than correct it. His logic is disarming: he could always blend to make a good wine, he says, but that is not his way. He could add acidity and good would come of it. But his job is to show "this grape in this year." Instead of acid, he goes with fruit expression — and accepts that the wines will be different every vintage, because the grapes are different every year, and because, as he puts it, "every year the grapes are not the same, and I am not the same."
The cellar is a playground of recovered techniques. When Spanish fashion turned to French oak in the 1980s and 90s, the island's traditional chestnut barrels were forgotten — yet chestnut was the standard wood of Mallorcan winemaking for generations. Carlos tracked down chestnut casks from Cataluña and, in 2017, nervously filled one with 500 bottles of Premsal, taste-testing weekly. Premsal Castaño is now a regular. He plays with lees deliberately, racking to create second fermentations that lend creaminess; his orange wine stays on its skins and lees to shift the flavour from pear toward baked pear, then apricot. In 2018 he fermented in oak, stainless and clay all at once, "so every year is different. I like to play."
And then there are the Bonus Tracks. Every year Carlos makes one-off wines from grapes with special qualities that harvest — once those bottles are gone, they are gone. A naturally sweet, jam-like Merlot rosé in 2016. Beer made from grapes, another year. A red blend of seven varieties across different vintages. An Ancestral pét-nat from Gorgollassa. Callet or Manto Negro, only when the vintage deserves them. Some years a variety simply doesn't appear. With seventeen wines in the range, he says, choosing a favourite is impossible: "it's like having 17 children."
The Wines — Premsal in Three Voices, Gorgollassa at Heart
The range runs to roughly seventeen wines in a good year, nearly all monovarietal — Carlos believes single-variety bottlings are the only honest way to understand a grape — built on a stable core of Premsal Blanc, Gorgollassa, Giró Ros, Malvasía de Estellencs and Escursac, surrounded by a rotating cast of Bonus Tracks. Everything ferments spontaneously in a working space of about twenty square metres, stainless tanks shoulder to shoulder, with chestnut barrel and clay pots for the experiments. All of it sells out.
"Premsal"
100% Premsal Blanc — MallorcaThe wine that proved the island wrong. 100% Premsal Blanc, stainless steel only, spontaneous fermentation, no additions in the best years — Reg calls the 2019 "a 10." Low in sugar by nature, rarely above 12% alcohol even in hot years, its simplicity is its signature: pear and fennel, a gentle Mediterranean salinity, and a clarity that no amount of Chardonnay blending ever gave the grape. Carlos is unapologetic: "Only Premsal works. I am proud of this Premsal." The 2019 was made with absolutely nothing added at all. Unfiltered, undisgorged of its truth.
"Premsal Castaño"
Premsal aged in chestnut — MallorcaThe archaeologist's wine. Before French oak became fashion on the island in the 1980s, chestnut was the standard barrel wood of Mallorca — then it vanished from cellars and memory alike. Carlos sourced chestnut casks from Cataluña and, in 2017, filled one with Premsal, tasting weekly, nervous about the 500 bottles inside. The marriage of the island's humblest white grape with its forgotten wood is now one of the estate's regulars — the chestnut lending a spicier, drier, more herbal frame than oak ever did, a flavour that tastes like the island before industrialisation. A wine that recovers two lost things at once.
"Premsal Orange"
Skin-fermented Premsal — MallorcaMallorca had no tradition of skin-fermented whites — so Carlos created one: the island's first orange wine, a Brisat of Premsal fermented on its skins "as if it were a red." The skins bring tannin, texture and that eponymous amber-orange hue. Carlos plays the élevage on lees deliberately, pushing the flavour from fresh pear through baked pear toward apricot as the wine gains volume. Yes, people have asked if orange skins are involved. No — only the grape, its skin, and time. An occasional sell-out that appears when the vintage allows.
"Giró Ros"
100% Giró Ros — MallorcaGiró Ros — a white grape wearing a pink name — makes the most complex white in the range. Naturally higher in sugar than Premsal, it typically reaches 14–15% alcohol while keeping a bright, dry line: honey, Mediterranean herbs and grapefruit on a full, generous frame. Bárbara's first love among the wines, and many visitors'. Where Premsal is a sketch, Giró Ros is a painting — proof the island's whites have more than one register. Spontaneous fermentation, stainless steel, minimal sulphur, unfiltered.
"Clarete"
80% Premsal + 20% red — Mallorca"We are the first Clarete producers on the island" — and to this day essentially the only one. The technique — called Cigales on the Spanish mainland — is a wine style, not a grape: roughly 80% white must fermented together with 20% red grapes on their skins. Carlos took the Castilian formula (Viura plus Tempranillo) and made it Mallorcan: Premsal with Manto Negro from a young Pollença vineyard in the early vintages, then Gorgollasa. The result looks like a rosé but is legally and philosophically something else — white flowers on the nose, a pointed acidity and a pleasing bitterness beyond any rosé, endlessly versatile at the table. A format Spain nearly forgot, reborn on an island that never had it.
"Gargo"
100% Gorgollassa — MallorcaNamed for the grape's diminutive, Gargo is Carlos's favourite wine — the purest expression of the rescued Gorgollassa, made with "less make-up" than any other on the island, in Reg's words. It is a wine of very long opening: closed and mineral on day one, transformed on day two. Madroño and sloe, violets, pink pepper, smoke, black earth, mushrooms, and with air the mountain herbs — salvia, garrigue — arrive. Reg calls Gorgollassa "the Pinot Noir of the Mediterranean": structured yet light, nuanced, faithful to variety. The label thanks the Ribas winery, who found three plants in Inca in 2000 and spent thirteen years giving the grape back to everyone.
"Ancestral"
Gorgollassa rosé pét-nat — MallorcaIn 2017, Selva Vins made the first pét-nat ever produced on Mallorca. The method is the oldest of all sparkling-wine techniques — Ancestral, from the era before anyone understood what yeast was doing: bottle the wine while it is still fermenting, seal it, and let the final fermentation's carbon dioxide dissolve into the wine itself. One fermentation, no dosage, no disgorgement tricks, no added sugar. The Gorgollassa rosé version — a Bonus Track in the years it appears — is pale, vinous and joyfully rustic: red berries, herbs and a fine, natural fizz from the island's most romantic grape. When the bottles are gone, they are gone until Carlos decides the vintage deserves another.
"Malvasía Dulce Natural"
Malvasía from Pollença — MallorcaBorn of an accident, kept by genius. Malvasía's high sugars normally ferment long and dry, but in this vintage the indigenous yeast died early and fermentation stopped on its own, leaving residual sugar and moderate alcohol. Carlos could have restarted it; instead he finessed it — into chestnut barrel, where it turned amber and gorgeous. Gorgeous nose, light natural sweetness balanced by the grape's own acidity. "Now it is famous," he says, with satisfaction rather than surprise. From a vineyard in Pollença, at the island's northern tip. A natural sweet wine that could only have happened in a cellar that lets accidents live.
"Maneras de Vivir"
7 indigenous reds — MallorcaA rare blend in a monovarietal house: seven indigenous red grape varieties from a certified-organic vineyard, co-fermented spontaneously with no added sulphites or additives, unfined, unfiltered — pure grapes and nothing more, as the label promises. The palate is a walk through the island's red-grape patchwork: plum, blackberry and strawberry, red apple, graphite, smoke, licorice and wild rosemary; lactic, easy-drinking and long. Where the monovarietals teach you the grapes one by one, Maneras de Vivir shows you the island as a whole — "ways of living," indeed.
Bonus Tracks & Rarities
Variable — MallorcaThe laboratory that never closes. Callet and Manto Negro appear only in vintages when the grapes are genuinely great — "without a good grape he can't make a good wine." The 2016 Merlot rosé, naturally sweet, dark as jam. Beer made from grapes. A red blended from seven varieties across different vintages. The debut of newly certified Giró Negre, the dark sibling of Giró Ros, which only won commercial approval in 2023 after a decade of work. And the experiments with oak, stainless and clay amphora side by side, as in 2018. These are the wines that keep Carlos curious — and the reason no two visits to the celler ever taste the same.
Legacy — The Man Who Took Away the Island's Fear
When Carlos opened his rented celler in 2015, there was no natural-wine culture on Mallorca. The island's wine conversation ran on DO Binissalem categories, international varieties and bagged tartaric acid. Today the island has a growing cohort of low-intervention producers, four or five of them making ancestral sparkling wines, several making orange wines — and a movement that traces its courage back to the little blue bottles from Selva. Carlos's own verdict, offered with typical modesty: Selva Vins "took away the fear" — from wineries that had been making natural wine on the sly, or wanting to and not daring. "If they have dared, and it works out well for them, now I take away the fear and I do it too."
The deeper legacy is varietal. In a decade, Carlos has built the most complete public argument for Mallorca's indigenous grapes that exists in bottle: three expressions of Premsal — a grape the trade had written off as filler — plus the chestnut-barrel revival; the first orange wine, the first clarete, the first pét-nat the island ever saw; a Malvasía sweet wine saved from a stalled fermentation; a seven-variety field blend that tastes like the island's whole red-grape vocabulary at once. And behind the wines, the quiet civic work of variety recovery — pushing, with other producers, the decade-long certifications of Gorgollassa and Giró Negre through the slow machinery of Spanish ampelography.
The method matters as much as the result. Carlos is a refusenik by craft: twenty years of doing the conventional job expertly, then choosing — with full knowledge of what he was giving up — the certification, the acid, the yeast, the filter, the appellation. He is not a romantic; he is a technician who concluded that the honest process and the good wine are the same thing. His wines are proudly different every year, proudly low in acidity, proudly uncertified, proudly hand-sealed in blue wax at an hour a bottle by his own family. "Every year the grapes are not the same, and I am not the same." It is perhaps the most complete statement of natural winemaking ever made — and in Mallorca, it has become a movement's founding sentence.
Selva Vins is still small — 17,000 bottles, deliberately capped at 20,000, a garage-sized celler in a village most visitors drive through without stopping. But with the Estellencs vineyard coming into production, the next chapter will add estate-grown fruit to the project for the first time. The scale will not change. The moon on the label will stay. And Carlos will go on making his wines his way — seventeen children, every one of them different, every one of them unmistakably Mallorca.