The Abandoned Plot, the Honeycomb & the Family Hand
Sifer Wines is what happens when a family refuses to scale a good thing — a tiny natural-wine project run by the Orengo Ferreira family, its name a fusion of the two family surnames, Silva and Ferreira. It began about twenty years ago as an escape from work: a small plot of abandoned vines outside Calaceite, in the Matarraña, stumbled upon almost by chance and slowly cared for until the vines bore fruit again. The first wines were made without additives, just for the family's own table. The game became a passion; the passion, around 2017, became a winery. Today the family farms just four hectares in two places — east of Calaceite in Teruel's Matarraña, and southeast of Batea in Tarragona's Terra Alta, one of the highest estates in the municipality — at 300 to 350 metres, on poor "honeycomb" soils of sand, silt and clay, each plot ringed and sheltered by forest. Certified organic, worked by the lunar and sidereal cycles with biodynamic principles, harvested by hand at night into small boxes. Two varieties only: Garnacha and Macabeo. In the cellar in Castellar del Vallès, the rule is the one on every label: native yeasts, no additives, no corrections, no added sulfites, unfined and unfiltered — élevage split between clay amphorae, stainless steel and used French oak. There is an olive mill too, in Corbera d'Ebre, for the family's oils. Total production runs to roughly 500 cases a year, sold directly, without intermediaries — from their hands, as they say, to your table. Each bottle, in their own words, contains landscape, honesty, and a simple, unadorned way of doing things.
The Escape, the Abandoned Vines & the Two Surnames
The story begins, as the family tells it, almost by chance — and as an escape. About twenty years ago, looking for a way out of work and city life, the Orengo Ferreira family stumbled upon a small plot of abandoned vines outside Calaceite, the honey-stone town of the Matarraña, in Teruel. They fell in love with the place and began, slowly, to care for it — pruning back the years of neglect until the vines bore fruit again. From those grapes came the first wines: made without additives, and made only for the family's own enjoyment. What began as a game turned into a passion, and over time into a project to share — a winery, formalized around 2017, for everyone who values the natural and the authentic.
The name is the family, compressed: SIFER — SIlva plus FERreira, the two surnames the project unites. The team is the family too: Ephraim Orengo, winemaker; his brother Joan Orengo, winemaker and engineer; Goreti da Silva, winemaker; and Roc Orengo, grower and engineer — father and son, brothers and partner, every role covered from the inside. There is no outside capital, no consultancy, no sales force; there is a family, four hectares, a small cellar in Castellar del Vallès and an olive mill in Corbera d'Ebre, and a stubborn refusal to become anything bigger.
That refusal is the point. Sifer was never designed to grow — it was designed to revive: abandoned vines, a forgotten corner of border country between Aragón and Catalonia, and a way of making wine that needs nothing but grapes. The whole production is around 500 cases a year, sold directly to the people who drink it. In a Spanish wine culture built on volume, Sifer is the quiet counter-argument: small enough to stay honest, honest enough to stay small.
"Each bottle contains landscape, honesty, and a simple, unadorned way of doing things."
— Sifer Wines, the Orengo Ferreira Family
Matarraña, Terra Alta & the Honeycomb Hand
Sifer's vines live in two pieces of the same border country — the hill country where Catalonia leans into Aragón. The original plot lies east of Calaceite, in the Matarraña comarca of Teruel: a land of honey-coloured stone villages, almond groves and abandoned farmsteads, often called the Spanish Tuscany. The second lies southeast of Batea, in Terra Alta — "the high land" — where the family's holding counts among the highest estates in the municipality. Both sit between 300 and 350 metres; both are small plots completely protected by the forest that surrounds them, islands of vines inside woodland, sealed off from any neighbour's chemistry by trees.
The soils are poor and precisely measured: 38.5% sand, 22% clay, 39.5% silt — a structure the family calls "honeycomb," low in organic matter and quick to drain. Rain is scarce, about 500 litres a year, and the family chose from the start not to irrigate: limited water means moderate vigour, low yields and low humidity — ideal conditions, as they put it, for vine health. The climate is properly continental, with sharp contrasts of temperature, humidity and wind between hot days and cool nights, letting the grapes ripen slowly and completely, with their aromatics and their acidity intact.
The farming matches the setting's simplicity. Native, unsown cover crops grow between the rows; natural mulches sit beneath the vines; the work is done by hand according to the lunar and sidereal cycles, with some tasks following biodynamic principles, and machinery used without being depended on. Harvest is done by hand, at night, into small boxes, so the grapes arrive at the cellar cool and intact. And because healthy, ripe fruit needs nothing, the musts can be vinified clean — nothing added — which is the entire premise of the wines. The third estate, at Corbera d'Ebre, grows the olives: a village whose old town still stands in ruins from the Battle of the Ebro, a reminder that this border country has always asked its people to rebuild.
East of Calaceite, in Teruel's Matarraña — the honey-stone hill country often called the Spanish Tuscany — lies the small abandoned vineyard the family found twenty years ago and slowly brought back to life. Forest on every side, honeycomb soils of sand, silt and clay, and vines that now produce some of the estate's most concentrated fruit. Every Sifer wine descends from the decision to save this plot rather than let it go back to scrub.
Southeast of Batea, in Tarragona's Terra Alta — "the high land," the white-garnacha heartland of southern Catalonia — the family's second holding is one of the highest estates in the municipality. Up here the continental swings are at their sharpest: blazing days, cold nights, and the slow, complete ripening that gives Sifer's Garnacha its natural generosity without losing its line. Garnacha country, in other words, at its most elevated.
The family knows its soil to the decimal point: 38.5% sand, 22% clay, 39.5% silt, poor in organic matter — the "honeycomb." Poor soil, dry farming and 500 litres of annual rain add up to the viticulturist's quiet dream: moderate vigour, small berries, low disease pressure, and fruit that needs no correction. It is the kind of terroir that punishes ambition and rewards restraint — which suits this family exactly.
The third estate, in the Terra Alta village of Corbera d'Ebre, is given to olives: the family's certified-organic mill produces their extra virgin oils with the same no-additives creed as the wines. The village's ruined old town, left standing since the Battle of the Ebro, keeps the region's memory of destruction and rebuilding — a history the family honours in its own way, by reviving abandoned land one plot at a time. Wines and oils, one philosophy.
Night Harvests, Amphorae & the Nothing-Added Hand
The cellar work begins in the dark. Grapes are picked by hand, at night, into small boxes — the coolest hours of the Mediterranean late summer, so the fruit arrives intact and unbruised, needing no rescue. From there, the interventionist's toolkit is simply never opened: no selected yeasts, no enzymes, no corrections, no added sulfites (or traces below 10 mg/L), no fining, no filtration. Fermentations run on the yeasts the vineyard sent. If a vintage is difficult, the family's answer is patience, not chemistry.
Élevage happens in three vessels, chosen wine by wine: clay amphorae, which calm the orange wines and let texture build without wood flavour; stainless steel, for the freshest expressions; and used French oak, reserved for the aged red Samuel, where the oak is a frame rather than a flavour. The sparkling Goreti is made by the traditional method with must from a later harvest — and even here, no pressing and no clarification. Balance, freshness and authenticity, in the family's words, are the only targets. Unhurried, straightforward, and deeply respectful of what the land provides.
The result is a range that reads like a family portrait — the wines are even named for its members. But behind the warmth is rigour: certified-organic vineyards and cellar, lunar-timed work, night harvests, vessels chosen with intent. Natural wine at this level of purity is not the absence of technique; it is technique in the service of subtraction. Sifer's winemaking is proof that "simple and honest" is not a style — it is a discipline.
Simple and Honest — the Sifer Method
The Sifer method fits in a sentence, and takes twenty years to learn. Farm four forest-guarded hectares organically, by the moon, without irrigation; pick by hand at night into small boxes; let the native yeasts ferment what the vineyard grew; raise the wine in clay, steel or old oak as its character asks; add nothing, take nothing away, bottle it cloudy if that's how it wants to be. Then sell it yourself, without intermediaries, to people who value the natural and the authentic. Five hundred cases a year, two grape varieties, one family — and a back label with the shortest ingredients list in wine: grapes.
Ephraim, Víbria, Samuel & the Family-Name Hand
The range is a family portrait — the wines carry the family's names — painted with just two varieties: Garnacha and Macabeo. Two reds, a white, two orange wines raised in clay, a traditional-method sparkler, and pét-nats that appear when the vintage feels playful (Boom, Xplosiu). Every bottle: certified-organic estate fruit, night-harvested by hand, native-fermented, no additives, no added sulfites, unfined and unfiltered. Total production runs to around 500 cases a year — allocation is not a marketing word here.
The Twenty-Year Game, the Two Varieties & the Honest Hand
Sifer's legacy is the road not taken. Twenty years ago the family found an abandoned plot and did the unhurried thing: restored it, drank the wine themselves, and only when the passion proved durable turned it into a project — never a business plan. In a Spanish industry built on volume, irrigation and additives, they chose four hectares, two varieties, five hundred cases, and a distribution model with no intermediaries at all. It is the smallest possible refutation of the idea that wine must scale to matter.
The second legacy is restoration as mission. The Matarraña and Terra Alta are full of abandoned vines — victims of the same rural exodus that emptied the hill villages — and Sifer's founding act was to take one back. The family's estates, forest-ringed and dry-farmed, show what such plots can give when they are protected rather than replanted to thirstier ambitions: healthy, concentrated fruit that needs nothing added, from land that asks nothing but care. The olive mill at Corbera d'Ebre extends the same creed to oil.
And the third legacy is already pouring. Listed on Raisin, stocked by natural-wine specialists from Barcelona to Bologna, poured in Galway, and singled out by Wine Chords as "a winery to watch" — Sifer has arrived without ever raising its voice. Ephraim and Joan make the wines, Goreti makes them too, and Roc grows the grapes; the next vintage is already in amphora, and the next abandoned plot, one suspects, is already being looked at. Simplicity, at its purest — and a family that means to keep it that way.
"Ephraim and Roc Orengo, father and son — I didn't know Sifer Wines, but it clearly is a winery to watch."
— Wine Chords, on Sifer Wines