The Shepherd, the River & the Brisat Hand
Vins Desantesos is the Ribera d'Ebre's youngest old soul — a natural-wine project in Vinebre, on the banks of the Ebre in southern Catalonia, founded in 2019 by Ariadna Servelló, when she was twenty-five. There are few people more salt of the earth: winemaker by day, shepherd by dusk and dawn, Ari tends her grapes with the same care she gives her flock of sheep and herd of goats. It began in the family garage in 2017, while she studied oenology; a spell working in a cellar and training in biodynamic agriculture taught her the lesson that rules everything she does — wine is cared for first in the vineyard. Her grandfather, who made garage wine as a hobby, leased her his vines; she has since gathered old, goblet-pruned parcels leased from farmers across the area, most of them elderly, many of which would otherwise be abandoned — Garnatxa Peluda, Garnatxa Negra, Monestrell, Macabeu and Pansal, the local name for Xarel·lo, on the sandy, silty soils the river laid down. The farming is biodynamic in spirit — phytotherapy against disease, preparations to nourish the soil — and the cellar creed is absolute: native yeasts, no additives to ferment or stabilize, no fining, no filtering, no added sulfur. Above all, Ari is reviving the vins brisats — the skin-contact wines that were the tradition of southern Catalonia before the factories came. The wines carry Vinebre's own words on their labels: a mischievous child, a village bandit, a plot name, a grandmother's trade. Around her a crew of friends — Abel, Marc, Montse, Josep — builds what she calls an organisme granja: vines, century-old olive trees, sheep, a closed loop. "I chose a job where I see the sun go up and down every day," she says. "It's a good life."
The Garage, the Grandfather's Vines & the Shepherd's Hand
The first laboratory was the family garage. While studying oenology, Ariadna Servelló began experimenting with winemaking at home in Vinebre — trials, demijohns, mistakes — from 2017. Work in a commercial cellar followed, and with it the formation that would define her: training in biodynamic agriculture, from which she drew the conclusion that underpins the whole project — that wine is made, above all, in the vineyard. In 2019, at twenty-five, she founded Vins Desantesos in Vinebre, beside the Ebre, and began leasing vines from her grandfather, who had made garage wine as a hobby. The way and the philosophy were ancestral from the start: recovering how her forebears made wine, not inventing a new one.
The project quickly became a crew. Abel, a farmer and rancher, joined with his knowledge of the land and the behaviour of livestock; Marc, a mechanic by trade, came next; then Montse, a tourism graduate, giving form to the winery and its voice; and most recently Josep, another farmer in love with field work. Together they are building what Ari calls an organisme granja — a farm organism that closes the productive cycle: vines, century-old olive trees for oil, a flock of sheep and a herd of goats. Winemaker by day, shepherd at dusk and dawn — the tending of grapes and animals done with the same tender care.
The mission reaches beyond the cellar door. The Ribera d'Ebre is depopulating country — vineyards, olive groves and whole farms left uncultivated as the young leave — and Vins Desantesos declares itself an economic alternative to the region's existing industry: recovering abandoned vineyards and groves, conserving the landscape, revitalizing the territory, promoting responsible tourism. The wine, they say, explains the territory with maximum respect for the fruit and the land that rocks it. It is a manifesto you can pour.
"I chose a job where I see the sun go up and down every day. It's a good life."
— Ariadna Servelló, Vins Desantesos
The Ebre, the Sandy Banks & the Old-Vine Hand
Vinebre sits in the Ribera d'Ebre — the last comarca of the great river before it meets the sea — a land of silty banks, almond groves and olive terraces in southern Tarragona. The vineyards Ari works are old, most of them goblet-pruned, and nearly all of them leased from farmers of the area — elderly growers whose parcels, without her, would join the comarca's long list of abandoned land. She tends them one by one, parcel by parcel, on the sandy and silty soils the Ebre laid down: poor, alluvial, quick to warm, perfect for the region's ancestral varieties.
The variety roll is the territory's own memory: Garnatxa Peluda — the "hairy" grenache of the Ebre country, with downy leaves and naturally fresher wines — Garnatxa Negra, Monestrell, Macabeu, and Pansal, the local name for Xarel·lo. Varieties used here since antiquity, farmed now with biodynamic techniques to nourish the soil and phytotherapy to prevent disease — plant-based preparations in place of chemistry. One parcel dates to 1965; others carry vines of eighty years and more. The vineyard register is less a holding than a roster of rescued elders.
And the place is written on every label. Each wine carries a local Vinebre word — tracalet, a mischievous child; barbut, a bandit from the village's past; buik, the old name of a farm partition; modista, the seamstress trade of Ari's grandmother; Helichrysum, the everlasting flower of the riverbanks. Product, territory and memory bound in a single word — so that opening a bottle is also opening the village dictionary. Around the vines, the rest of the organism: the flock, the goats, the century-old olives, and the river moving past it all, as it has through every vintage this valley has known.
A riverside village in the last stretch of the Ebre before the sea, where the river's alluvium — sand and silt — makes the vineyard soils, and the valley's rhythm still sets the working day. This is one of Catalonia's oldest wine landscapes and one of its most emptied: the comarca's depopulation is the backdrop to everything Desantesos does. Making wine here, from these vines, is itself an act of conservation.
Desantesos owns little and tends much: old, goblet-pruned parcels leased from local farmers, many of them elderly, kept in production by hand and by care. A Garnatxa Peluda vineyard planted in 1965 gives Lo Barbut; eighty-year-old vines give the depth behind Lo Buik and Helichrysum. Each lease is a small rescue — a vineyard kept alive, a farmer's lifetime of knowledge kept useful, a landscape kept open.
The project is a farm organism, not a winery with a view: vines, century-old olive trees for the family's oil, and the flocks — sheep and goats — that Ari shepherds at dusk and dawn. Animals graze, manure returns to soil, oil and wine and wool share the same closed loop. It is the old Mediterranean polyculture, rebuilt by a woman in her twenties with a flock and a fermenter — the cycle, closed again.
Every cuvée carries a word of the village: Lo Tracalet, the mischievous kid; Lo Barbut, a bandit of local legend; Lo Buik, an old partition of the family farm; La Modista, the seamstress — Ari's grandmother's trade; Helichrysum, the everlasting flower. The labels are a dialect archive as much as a range of wines: territory and memory, pressed into the bottle along with the grapes.
Skins, Mares & the Brisat Hand
The heart of the cellar is a recovery. Before the industrial era, southern Catalonia made vins brisats — "broken" wines, fermented with their skins, the everyday amber and red wines of farmhouses along the Ebre. Desantesos has decided to recover this essence: skin contact is not a fashion here but an inheritance. Lo Tracalet ferments two to three weeks on the skins; Helichrysum goes a full month, skins and stems together — the old way, rebottled.
Around that centre, the rules are absolute. The wines ferment with the native yeasts the grapes bring; nothing is added to ferment or to stabilize; there is no fining, no filtering, no added sulfur. Élevage is long and calm — wines rest amb les mares, on their lees, for months: Lo Tracalet four months, Helichrysum and La Modista twelve, the vessels chosen by ear — stainless steel, old French oak for Lo Buik, and 54-litre damajuanes for half of Helichrysum, the glass balloons of the old Catalan cellar.
The style that results is the opposite of corrected wine: cloudy when it wants to be, alive always, aromatic in a way that Super Glou calls "grandma chic" — the perfume of the farmhouse pantry, dried flowers and river herbs, translated into the present. Young wine, old method: the old, slow rhythms of the past, as Ari's importer puts it, made present tense. Nothing added to the wine; nothing taken from the memory.
The Brisat Method — Nothing Added, Memory Intact
The Desantesos method is the Ebre's own, recovered. Lease old goblet vines and farm them alive — biodynamic preparations for the soil, phytotherapy for the vines. Pick by hand; ferment on the native yeasts with the skins, as the farmhouse brisats always were; add nothing, not a gram of sulfur; fine nothing, filter nothing. Let the wines rest on their mothers for months — steel, old oak, or the 54-litre damajuana — and name them in the village's own words. It reads like nostalgia and tastes like the future: the old, slow rhythms of southern Catalonia, translated bottle by bottle into the present.
Lo Barbut, Lo Tracalet, Helichrysum & the Vinebre-Word Hand
Five wines, five Vinebre words: two reds, two brisats, and a Monestrell raised on its lees — all from old, dry-farmed goblet vines on the river's sand and silt, all native-fermented, all unfined, unfiltered and without added sulfur. Production is counted in parcels, not hectares, and every label is a small piece of the village dictionary. Chill the reds, decant the brisats, and let each bottle breathe — they are alive, and proud of it.
The Depopulated Comarca, the Rescued Vines & the Good-Life Hand
Vins Desantesos is six years old and already a proof: that the depopulated inland comarcas of southern Catalonia are not finished — they are waiting. Every leased parcel kept in production, every elderly farmer's knowledge kept useful, every bottle named in Vinebre's own dialect pushes against the current. The project states its ambition plainly: to become an economic alternative to the region's industry, conserving landscape, revitalizing territory, recovering the vineyards and olive groves that abandonment was swallowing.
The second legacy is a tradition pulled back from the edge. The vins brisats of southern Catalonia — farmhouse skin-contact wines, fermented as they had been for centuries — were within a generation of disappearing entirely, replaced by the stainless, corrected, sulphured norm. Desantesos didn't imitate the fashion for orange wine; it recovered its own. Lo Tracalet and Helichrysum are not natural-wine style exercises. They are the Ebre's memory, fermented with its skins, resting on its mothers.
And the third legacy is a life chosen in public. In six years the wines have travelled from the Vinebre garage to JancisRobinson.com's tasting table and Super Glou's shelves in America, carried entirely by word of mouth and the strength of the story. But the story's centre has not moved: a young woman who sees the sun rise and set over the same river every day, who tends sheep at dusk and vines at dawn, and who calls it, simply, a good life. The Ribera d'Ebre has its winemaker-shepherd. The vines, and the village, are in good hands.
"We make wines that follow the tradition of southern Catalonia, where vins brisats were made, and we have decided to recover this essence. The wine we make explains our territory with the maximum respect to the fruit and the land that rocks us."
— Vins Desantesos, the Project's Founding Statement