Winemaker Paula Fandiño

Mar de Frades is a winery located in the up and coming Rias Baixas wine region of northwest Spain. Mar de Frades, established in 2007, is located in the Salnés valley and close to the Arousa estuary. The winery features the Albariño grape variety.

In addition to Albariño still wine, Mar de Frades is also producing a 100 percent Brut Nature made with 100 percent Albariño grapes. This is produced with the  classic Méthode.

Mar de Frades location:

Finca Valiñas, Lg Arosa 16, 36637
Meis, Pontevedra (Spain)

In response to a series of questions, Winemaker Paula Fandiño kindly responded.

1. What are your most enjoyable aspects of winemaking?

“What I like the most is that every day is different. It is a special process, global and unique every year, in which you work to get the best of each grape and translate it into a wine.”

2. How and when did your wine journey begin?

“Throughout the year, the works are different, in spring and summer, I am waiting for our vines to give their best aromatic version, in autumn and winter, I work with the fermentations and maintaining  all the aromas to get the best expression of our wines .

Wine is part of my life, something that has always been present in my house, in my surroundings, something that attracts me from a young age without knowing the reason why … after that, that feeling is transformed into passion, that is my case. I am an agronomist Ingeneer, because I understood that the principle and the base is the vineyard, after that I got specialized in the production of wines in the winery.”

3. Why did you decide to start making wine?

‘If you like something, you must go for it, so I understood that the global training in winemaking and marketing was necessary, and without even realizing it, after working in a vineyard for some years, I started to work in the winery, first learning, smelling and testing and subsequently directing the production of wines of various types.”

4. How many hectares of grapes are you growing? Which varieties are you growing?

“We work only with the native and best adapted variety of the area, the Albariño grape. We cultivate 35 ha (86.5 acres) of own Albariño vineyards. We have plantations of 40, 20 and 10 years old age, in addition we also work in another 125 ha (309 acres), also of the albariño variety, with which we elaborate our Mar de Frades wine.”

5. What do you wish you knew when you started making wine that you now know?

“My knowledge has been growing as steeply as the application of such knowledge to making wine; therefore, I´m not missing anything I had to have known before. Being alert to your environment, to what happens to the vineyard, to the strong influence of the Atlantic climate on the vineyard are elements that give character to my knowledge.”

6. To what do you contribute your success as a winemaker?

“Fundamentally to the rigor in the work, to the small details that mark the difference between wines. The care and dedication that all the team puts in the time of obtaining and bottling our best wines. It is the commitment, together with the necessary facilities and knowledge, which causes our wines to be excellent.”

7. Albariño is a very food friendly wine. What types of foods do you like to pair with Albariño wine?

“Because of the freshness and salinity of the wines, the Asian food pairs perfectly, both the raw fish and the slightly spicy dishes, are perfect. Nor do I forget the seafood that comes from Galician coasts: scallops, clams, oysters, barnacles …. It is a sure hit to harmonize with Mar de Frades.”

We wish Winemaker Paula Fandiño and Mar de Frades winery a wonderful future!

Cheers,
Kathy