The Granddaughter, the Recovered Vineyard & the Fountain Where the Grandfather Ate

Eva Aixalà is not a winemaker who learned her craft in a classroom or apprenticed at a famous estate. She is a granddaughter who remembered — who grew up watching her grandfather make wine in the traditional way, who knew the taste of the vineyard before she knew the terminology, and who could not accept that the land he had planted should be left to disappear. The story of Vega Aixalà is a story of inheritance — not merely of land, but of memory. In a region rich with almost ten centuries of winemaking history, Eva and Josep found a corner of Conca de Barberà where the practice had vanished, where the grandfather's old vineyard had been left to scrub and silence. And they decided to bring it back.

In 2003, Eva and Josep founded the winery after recovering and rebuilding the grandfather's old vineyard on the outskirts of Vilanova de Prades. They were not starting from scratch; they were returning to roots. From a young age, Eva had grown up watching wine being made in the traditional way — the hand-harvesting, the foot-pressing, the patience of waiting for the wine to find its own voice. Coming back to this project changed her life and returned her to her origins. The name Vega Aixalà carries the memory of the family and the land they cultivated. The project is not a reaction against modernity but a return to a deeper tradition — one in which the family knew every vine, every terrace, and every slab of slate by heart.

The recovery was not easy. The terraces had to be rebuilt stone by stone. The vines had to be replanted or nursed back to health. The infrastructure of a working vineyard — the cellar, the tools, the knowledge — had to be reconstructed from memory and determination. But Eva and Josep were not alone. They had the help of their family, the support of their community, and the stubborn conviction that the land remembers, even when people forget. By 2006, the cultivated land had increased to reach the current ten hectares — ten hectares of steep, terraced llicorella that would become the foundation of one of the most honest natural wine projects in Catalonia.

What emerged from this slow, patient work was a family winery of extraordinary clarity. Eva tends the vineyards and hosts the visitors, walking them through the terraces and explaining the particularities of each parcel. Josep works alongside her, tending the vines, harvesting by hand, and vinifying in the small village cellar. Their son and daughter are part of the project too — the daughter Emma lends her name to the flagship line of wines, a gesture that is not marketing but genealogy. The family lives among the vines, works among the vines, and makes wine that tastes of the exact place where the grandfather once stopped at a fountain to eat breakfast before working the fields. That fountain — La Font dels Aubacs — now gives its name to one of their most elegant cuvées. For Eva and Josep, this is not merely a business; it is a working monument to the recovery of a family legacy.

The winemaking philosophy of Vega Aixalà is distilled into a single, absolute commitment: no added sulfites, no filtration, no chemical products, and the utmost respect for the land. It is not a reaction against modernity; it is a return to the oldest possible methodology — a conviction that the wine should be nothing more than the transparent transformation of grape into liquid, with no corrections, no masks, and no shortcuts. Eva and Josep view themselves as artisans rather than manufacturers, and the cellar as an extension of the vineyard rather than a factory. Every decision is made to allow the grapes to express the mountain, the slate, and the altitude freely, and the result is a portfolio of wines that are raw, authentic, and deeply specific to Vilanova de Prades.

The methodology is deliberately simple and rigorously executed. The harvest is entirely manual, conducted in small boxes to keep the grapes intact and cool, and transported immediately to the small village cellar. Fermentation is spontaneous, initiated by the indigenous yeasts that live on the grape skins and in the mountain air. No cultured yeasts are used. No enzymes are added. No tannins are corrected. No sugar is chaptalised. The must is left to ferment at its own pace, in its own time, with the microbiological fingerprint of the high-altitude vineyard doing the work. The family uses a combination of cement tanks (tinajas), clay amphorae, and old French oak barrels — each vessel chosen for its ability to age the wine without distorting its origin. The cement tanks preserve freshness and minerality; the amphorae allow gentle oxidation and natural clarification; and the old oak adds structure and subtle spice without masking the fruit.

The ancestral method sparkling wines — bottled before fermentation is complete, with no added sugar or yeast — are perhaps the purest expression of this philosophy. The Emma Ancestral is 100% Macabeu, fermented spontaneously in tank and bottled during fermentation, allowing the wine's own natural sugars and indigenous yeasts to create a gentle, effervescent mousse without any dosage, liqueur de tirage, or disgorgement. It is wine that makes itself, in the bottle, with nothing but the grape's own sugar and the mountain's own yeast. The orange wines — like the Emma Garnatxa Blanca — are given skin maceration and aged in cement or clay amphorae, extracting phenolic depth and textural complexity without the intervention of enzymes or selected yeasts. And the reds — from the powerful Brutal Tinto to the elegant La Font dels Aubacs — are fermented spontaneously and aged in a combination of amphora, cement, and old French oak, with no filtration, no fining, and no added sulfites.

The commitment to purity extends to the finishing. No filtration. No fining. No added sulfites — or in some cuvées, levels below 10 mg/L. The wines are bottled as they are, with their natural sediment, their living yeasts, and their evolving character intact. This demands absolute cleanliness in the cellar, perfect grape health in the vineyard, and a willingness to accept that each bottle will be slightly different from the next. The family also produces wines under the Conca de Barberà DO as well as natural wines without additives, allowing them to express both the regulatory tradition and the radical freedom of zero-intervention winemaking. The result is not merely a winery but a family workshop — a small, self-sufficient ecosystem of vine, slate, cement, and wood, where the only ingredients are grapes, time, and patience. As Eva says: "Producing natural wine has its risks. It's hard work and requires patience: we are artisans."

Vega Aixalà is not merely a winery; it is a manifesto written in slate and family memory — a project that has redefined what it means to make wine in one of Catalonia's most historically rich regions by refusing to let a grandfather's dream disappear. In an era when the wine industry is obsessed with global varieties, engineered yeasts, and corporate consolidation, Eva Aixalà and Josep have demonstrated that the most profound wines sometimes come from a family who returned to an abandoned vineyard on a mountain, rebuilt the terraces stone by stone, and made wine without sulfites, without filtration, and without compromise. They have proven that Macabeu — often reduced to the anonymous base of industrial Cava — can be a sparkling wine of luminous purity and mountain minerality when fermented by the ancestral method with zero additives. That a blend of Albariño, Garnatxa Blanca, Riesling, and Roussanne can achieve a clarity and aromatic generosity that transcends its individual components. That Garnatxa Blanca, given skin contact and aged in amphora, can produce an orange wine of textural intrigue and honeyed depth. That Marselan — a modern crossing of Cabernet Sauvignon and Grenache — can be a wine of brutal intensity and slate-driven power. And that Pinot Noir, planted on llicorella at 900 metres, can achieve a finesse that rivals the great natural Pinots of cooler climates.

The legacy of Vega Aixalà is the legacy of the family who stayed and the vineyard that remembered. Eva and Josep did not come to Conca de Barberà as seekers or investors; they were already here, in memory if not in practice. Their choice to recover the grandfather's vineyard, to farm it organically, and to make wine without additives is not a marketing strategy — it is an act of return, a homecoming to the place where their family first fell in love with the vine. The name Emma on the label is not merely a brand; it is a promise — that the daughter who inherited this land will one day inherit a living tradition, not a ruined terrace. The name La Font dels Aubacs is not merely poetic; it is a map — a guide to the exact spot where the family's story began, where the grandfather ate breakfast, and where the wine still tastes of his presence.

The future of the project is tied to the future of natural wine as an act of familial fidelity — to the growing recognition that the greatest wines are not always made by those who innovate the most, but by those who remember the most: the granddaughters, the grandsons, the artisans who see possibility in abandonment and truth in the refusal to correct. As Emma Ancestral continues to prove that pét-nat can be both pure and mountain-driven, as La Bauma demonstrates that high-altitude white blends can be both generous and honest, as Emma Carinyena captures the wild soul of the Mediterranean's most underrated red grape, and as Caliu evolves in concrete and oak to prove that a family farm at 900 metres can produce wines of profound structure, Eva and Josep remain what they have always intended to be: a family from Vilanova de Prades who recovered their grandfather's vineyard, who farm steep llicorella terraces by hand, who harvest at 3,000 kilos per hectare, who ferment with indigenous yeasts in cement tanks and clay amphorae, who add nothing and filter nothing, who name their wines after their daughter and their grandfather's fountain — always without sulfites, always without crap, always true — one harvest, one spontaneous fermentation, one honest bottle at a time.