History of BODEGAS FARIÑA

In the economic context that followed the Spanish Civil War, and in the middle of the Second World War, a married couple from the province of Zamora in Spain, Salvador Fariña and his wife Tomasa López, like so many others, left their home town, Porto de Sanabria, to settle in another town in Zamora, Casaseca de las Chanas, in search of a better future.

30km from Toro, in the middle of the Tierra del Vino DO territory, they started a new life, and there they kicked off a new project: making wine in a rudimentary winery dug out from the limestone rock. That was the birth of Bodegas Porto, named in honour of their home town.

Their son, Manuel Fariña, who had been involved in the family business since its beginnings, returned from his oenology studies in Requena, Valencia, having come top of his class, and entered the family business with the dream of modernising and expanding the family winery, which would be named Bodegas Porto, in homage to the family origins.

We began making the first ‘Colegiata’ wines, with the aim of changing the model of Toro wines, which did not yet have a designation of origin classification. These first Colegiatas were reservas with less body and less alcohol content, aged in wooden barrels, and whose label was inspired by the Toro’s emblematic landmark, the Collegiate Church, or Colegiata. These are wines that are very different to the ones habitually produced in the area, which have a lot of structure and high levels of alcohol.

With these new wines in the boot of the car, back in the time before sat nav and mobile phones, with the glove compartment full of coins from different countries, maps of Europe and full of hope, Manuel Fariña - accompanied by his friend and exportation partner, Jose Antonio Mijares - travelled throughout the different countries of Europe presenting their wines and receiving a great international reception.

Bodegas Fariña was born. When Spain joined the European Economic Community in 1986, the name Bodegas Porto, under which the winery had first started bottling its wines, was changed to Bodegas Fariña. The new European regulations established that a winery could not have the same trade name as a winery belonging to a designation of origin of any member state, and the name Bodegas Porto was shared with a winery in a Portuguese Designation of Origin.

Manuel’s enthusiasm and motivation made him one of the main driving forces behind the Toro D.O., and the first president of its Regulatory Board In the same year, the construction of a new and modern winery in Toro meant looking towards a new market context and the start of a new era, not just for Fariña, but for the method of making Toro wine. The main factor, which lead to the real revolution in this winegrowing area, and was decisive in putting Toro on the world winegrowing map, was the incorporation of new technical criteria for grapevines and wineries.

+ The first change consisted of bringing the grape harvest forward by three weeks, which meant going from wines with around 17º of alcohol content, to new wines with an alcohol content of between 13º and 14º, bringing them a new consumer whose quality criteria had changed.

The installation of a new temperature control system in the fermentation process was a big change that allowed them to obtain wines that preserved the large carrousel of aromas already offered by Tinta de Toro grapes harvested at their optimum point of ripeness.

Apart from the numerous international prizes it won, the Gran Colegiata of 1982 and another two wines from the winery were awarded first place in the wine blind taste test organised by the Swiss magazine Vinum, in which the major Ribero del Duero wine brands participated. The news was picked up nationally too, and the spotlight was put on Toro wines and their potential. This would be the seed that would spark an interest in the area among other oenologists and wine producers.

The 1982 vintage went down in the history of our winery. Those first few international prizes and accolades awarded to our Gran Colegiata marked a watershed moment not just for the winery, but also for the region.

Manuel Fariña begins producing his Primero wine on commission for a Dutch customer. A wine that brings together the worlds of art and wine, with a label that reproduces an abstract painting, it became the first wine made using the traditional carbonic maceration method in the region, and an icon among the Fariña wines.

Manu Fariña, of the third generation of the family, who grew up among grapes and barrels, finished his studies as an agricultural engineer and a Masters in Oenology at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, and joined the family winery, facing the future with new dreams and challenges: to bring continuity and put his own stamp on the project that began over 75 years ago, that continues to grow in the hands of a team of professionals who are passionate about wine, and creating new lines of wines, such as the Modernas Tradiciones (modern traditions) series.

Fariña updates the image and style of its whole range of Toro wines, and launches its Gran Colegiata Original, which evokes the image of those first Colegiatas of the 1970s. It is a new wine that presents a statement of intent: to become an iconic and timeless wine, that doesn’t lose sight of where it is nor where it came from.