From an Insult, a Virtue — The Garage, the Granite & the Fight for Forgotten Vines
A pejorative nickname turned into a banner of honour. Raúl Calle and Laura Piñas landed at the foot of the Sierra de Gredos in 2012, fell in love with the Valle del Tiétar, and began making wine in their garage from vineyards many thought were already dead. Today, Vinos Naturi is a zero-sulphur, permaculture-driven project that saves abandoned old-vine Garnacha from extinction — one microvinification at a time.
Origin — The Insult, the Garage & the Grain of Sand
Raúl Calle and Laura Piñas landed at the foot of the Sierra de Gredos in 2012, in the Valle del Tiétar, and instantly fell in love. Their passion for the natural environment and for wine led them to acquire the commitment to transmit the character of one of the areas with the longest winemaking tradition in Spain — a character almost unknown outside the culture of bulk wine that had dominated the region for decades.
With this work, they also wanted the soil of those vineyards to come back to life. After years of widespread pesticide use, the microbiology of the land had been badly damaged. With the few grapes they harvested, they began to make wine in their garage under the Raúl Calle Viticultor brand. It was humble, hand-made, and honest. Finally, in 2021, they moved to a larger space where they could expand production and work more comfortably. That is when they changed the brand to Vinos Naturi.
The name itself is an act of defiance. "Naturi" was a pejorative term a friend used when referring to them — a dismissive jab at their natural-wine obsession. Raúl and Laura did what true believers do: they turned the insult into a virtue. The name now adorns bottles that travel from Madrid to Tokyo, from Barcelona to Brooklyn — a label that says, simply, we are what you mocked, and we are proud of it.
This growth brought about many changes. They began to make wine with grapes from other viticulturists who took care of their vines in the same way — without chemicals, respecting natural cycles. These were family vineyards planted by grandparents, parents, uncles — vineyards the owners did not want to lose, but whose only outlet had been the local cooperative, with its low prices and deferred payments. Most were tired, throwing in the towel, watching their heritage being uprooted. Raúl and Laura offered another path: partnership, respect, and a living wage for fruit farmed with integrity. Some other winegrowers listened, stopped applying chemicals, and joined the quiet revolution. "Lucky we feel with our grain of sand," Laura says.
The Place — The Tiétar, the Granite & the Inland Rain
The Sierra de Gredos is a mountain range roughly 100 kilometres west of Madrid, divided into three glacial valleys, each with its own climate and soul. Vinos Naturi works in the Valle del Tiétar, the southernmost valley — the rainiest of the three, with a Mediterranean climate of rainy springs and hot summers, granite soils, and green meadows that feel more verdant than the arid plateau to the north. Elevations reach up to 1,000 metres, and the diurnal temperature swing is dramatic — 95°F days can collapse to 61°F nights, allowing Garnacha to ripen slowly while preserving the acidity that makes Gredos wines so distinctive.
Granite, Quartz & Silt
The soils of the Tiétar are predominantly granitic sand — coarse, poor in organic matter, and free-draining. The granite is crumbly; you can break it into grains with your fingers. Some plots carry schist and slate, giving more assertive, potent wines. But the Tiétar's signature is its sandy granite bedrock, which forces vine roots to dig deep for water and imparts a linear, floral, almost Burgundian character to the Garnacha. It is not the thick, dark Grenache of the Rhône or Priorat. It is something else entirely — pale, ethereal, and mineral.
Hundreds of Years Old
The vineyards Raúl and Laura tend are very old — in many cases, hundreds of years old. They are strict dry-land vines, bush-trained in the traditional en vaso style, shaped by decades of wind and drought. Short pruning is practised deliberately: less kilos, but richer grapes. Yields are minuscule, often under 30 hectolitres per hectare. These are not vines that can be mechanised. Everything is done by hand — pruning, clearing, harvesting — and often on slopes too steep for anything but a mule and a strong back.
Permaculture & Recovery
Raúl and Laura apply the principles of permaculture — each ecosystem regulates itself. They observe and act: they clear or plough plots depending on the needs of each one, the weather of the year, the orientation, the microclimate. They respect the vines' times, do not force them, and do not apply chemical products that interfere with the wine they will become. The goal is not just organic certification but soil recovery — bringing microbiology back to earth that had been sterilised by decades of pesticide abuse.
The Community of Growers
Vinos Naturi is not just an estate — it is a network. Raúl and Laura work with viticulturists across the Tiétar who farm family parcels organically but do not make wine themselves. These growers had been selling to cooperatives for pennies, watching their inheritance devalued. Naturi offers them fair prices, immediate payment, and the dignity of seeing their grapes become something sought-after. In turn, some have stopped applying chemicals entirely. It is a model of natural wine as community organising — agricultural, economic, and social.
Winemaking — Nothing Except the Juice of Healthy Grapes
Vinos Naturi's cellar philosophy is as radical as it is simple: "The wines contain nothing except the juice of healthy grapes that we preselect when we harvest. We do not correct, we do not filter, we do not stabilize, we do not add preservatives to any of our wines." This is not marketing language. It is a technical manifesto — and a risk. In a region where the cooperative tradition favoured volume over precision, Raúl and Laura have chosen the narrow path of zero intervention.
All work in the cellar is manual and artisan. They carry out microvinifications — small lots, individual parcels, separate fermentations. They love being free and able to try new and old winemaking techniques: long skin macerations, whole-cluster fermentations, ageing in old oak barrels, clay tinajas, and stainless steel. The vessel changes; the principle does not. Indigenous yeasts only. Spontaneous fermentation. No temperature manipulation. No additions of any kind — including sulphur dioxide.
The result is wine that is alive, variable, and honest. Some bottles may show a touch of reduction or volatility — the natural signatures of a wine without chemical safety nets. Others are pristine, crystalline expressions of granite and Garnacha. All of them carry the emotion of the vineyard, because nothing has been subtracted and nothing has been added. "We go from contributions that subtract the emotion," they say. It is a phrase that captures the entire natural wine movement in a single sentence.
Raúl and Laura preselect grapes in the vineyard and again at the winery. Only the healthiest fruit enters the fermentation vats. This rigorous sorting is their insurance policy — the cleaner the fruit, the less need for intervention later. Fermentations are long and gentle, with macerations that can extend for weeks, extracting colour, tannin, and complexity without harshness. The wines are then aged in old French oak barrels or left in tank, depending on the parcel and the vintage. Bottling is done by hand, unfined, unfiltered, and with zero added sulphur.
The Wines — Microvinifications from the Granite Heart of Gredos
Vinos Naturi's range is small, variable, and fiercely parcel-driven. Production is tiny — microvinifications from old vines, often just a few hundred bottles per cuvée. The wines are bottled without appellation constraints, liberated from the bureaucratic demands of the DO, and labelled with the honesty of a garage project that has outgrown the garage but kept its soul. All wines are vegan, unfined, unfiltered, and contain no added sulphites.
Naturi G
Old-vine Garnacha — Valle del Tiétar100% Garnacha (Grenache Noir) from 80-year-old vines planted on granite soils in the Valle del Tiétar. Bush-trained, dry-farmed, hand-harvested. Fermented with indigenous yeasts and aged in old oak barrels. No filtration, no clarification, no added sulphites. The wine shows the pale, ethereal, Burgundian side of Gredos Garnacha — red berries, wild herbs, a flinty mineral backbone, and a silken texture that belies its mountain origins. A wine of place, patience, and granite. Vegan.
Diabolesa
Garnacha-Tempranillo blend — Valle del TiétarA field blend of Garnacha and Tempranillo from old, dry-farmed bush vines in the Tiétar valley. Hand-harvested, naturally fermented, and aged with minimal intervention. The Garnacha provides the perfume — red cherry, wild strawberry, garrigue — while the Tempranillo adds structure, earth, and a darker, more brooding core. Together they create a wine that is both mountain-fresh and soulful, with the kind of savoury complexity that only old vines on poor granite can deliver. Unfiltered, unfined, no added sulphites.
Naturi Blanco
Albillo Real & white field blend — Valle del TiétarFrom the Albillo Real vines that have grown in Gredos for centuries — a white grape that thrives on granite and hot days, producing wines of texture, depth, and a honeyed, floral character when fully ripe. Raúl and Laura may include other local white varieties in the blend depending on the vintage and the parcels available. Fermented with indigenous yeasts, possibly with brief skin contact, and aged in old oak or tank. The result is a white wine of unexpected weight and complexity — jasmine, chamomile, citrus pith, and a saline, mineral finish that speaks of the granite beneath. No sulphur added.
Vinos de Viticultor (Partner Series)
Variable — Valle del Tiétar & Sierra de GredosThese are the wines Raúl and Laura make from the grapes of their partner viticulturists — family farmers across the Tiétar and broader Gredos who have converted to organic farming and sell their fruit to Naturi instead of the cooperative. Each vintage is different: one year it might be a single-parcel Garnacha from a 90-year-old vineyard on pink granite; the next, a mixed field blend of Garnacha, Malvar, and Malvasía from a hillside the owner thought was worthless. The only constant is the philosophy: healthy fruit, natural fermentation, zero additives. These wines are the proof that the Naturi model works — for the growers, for the drinkers, and for the land.
Legacy — The Grain of Sand Becomes a Landslide
Vinos Naturi matters because it represents the grassroots of the Spanish natural wine movement — not a famous name backed by investors, but a couple who arrived in 2012 with a van, a press, and a conviction that the old vineyards of the Tiétar deserved to live. In a region where the cooperative model had reduced viticulture to a race to the bottom — where growers were paid 10 to 15 cents per kilo and watched their grandparents' vines being uprooted for barley — Raúl and Laura offered something radical: respect, fair prices, and a belief that the land itself was worth more than the chemicals being poured onto it.
Their legacy is agricultural. By farming organically and biodynamically, by convincing neighbouring growers to stop using pesticides, and by creating a market for fruit that the DO ignored, they have preserved a piece of the Sierra de Gredos that would otherwise have been lost. The old Garnacha vines they tend — 80, 100, sometimes older — are irreplaceable. Their roots descend through metres of granite sand, tapping aquifers and mineral deposits that young vines cannot reach. When those vines die, a library of genetic material and terroir expression dies with them. Raúl and Laura are building an archive, one vintage at a time.
Their legacy is also methodological. The decision to work with zero added sulphur across the entire range is not a gimmick; it is a statement of absolute faith in the vineyard. It forces them to be fanatical about fruit health, cellar hygiene, and gentle handling. It also produces wines that evolve in the bottle — wines that are not stabilised into stasis but allowed to continue their conversation with the world. Some drinkers find this challenging. Others find it thrilling. Both reactions are valid, because the wine is alive.
And their legacy is social. The community of partner growers that Naturi has built is a model for how natural wine can function as an economic engine in rural Spain. By paying fair prices immediately, by bottling the wine under their own label rather than blending it anonymously into bulk, and by telling the story of each parcel, Raúl and Laura have given small farmers a reason to keep their vines. Some have even begun converting neighbouring plots. The grain of sand is becoming a landslide.
From the garage to the granite slopes, from an insult to a banner, from a few hundred bottles to a movement that stretches across the Tiétar, Vinos Naturi is a testament to what happens when two people decide that the land is worth more than the easiest path. "Lucky we feel with our grain of sand." The luck, of course, is ours — the drinkers who get to taste the result.