Bodega Can Feliu

The Free Bacchus Story

Records of winegrowing at the Feliu family’s manor house in Porreres go back to the late 18th century. Phylloxera, the insect that devastated Europe’s vineyards, ended it, and for about a hundred years the land went to almonds, olives and carob. In 1999 Carlos Feliu, back from wine studies in the United States, began planting vines again, almost as an experiment.

Porreres sits inland, in the middle of the island, among fields and olive groves. Mallorca has grapes of its own. Manto Negro, the most planted, makes a light red, and Callet a clean, medium-bodied one that stays low in alcohol; most Mallorcan wine blends them with international varieties. The reds on Can Feliu’s current list use neither. They are Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Syrah, with Monastrell in one, and all carry the Vi de la Terra de Mallorca name, a broader designation than the island’s two DOs, which asks that the grapes are grown on Mallorca and the wine bottled there.

The estate now has 18 hectares of vines among olive groves, fruit trees, a vegetable garden and cattle, pigs and horses. The grapes are picked by hand into small boxes and chilled for at least a day. For the reds the berries are then picked over one by one, fermented with their own yeasts and aged in French oak, part of the time in the manor-house cellar, which dates from 1794. One red, Binerbo, spends its year in Italian stoneware jars instead, the estate’s take on amphorae.

The EU organic register lists Carlos Feliu under CBPAE, the Balearic organic council, as a grower, and Demeter Spain lists him as a certified biodynamic producer, so the grapes are certified organic and biodynamic. Neither register certifies the wine. The company’s EU certificate does not list wine, and its Demeter record as a winemaker shows a validity date of 31 March 2026, now past.