About us
At the moment, with all due modesty, we find ourselves planning the rebirth of a winery. If, seen from afar by the reader, it appears to be just another plan, one more new winery on the island, when telling the story in the first person it is just the opposite: the years to come represent enormous effort, high hopes, passion, uncertainty…
The Santa Catarina Winery was founded in 1984 by Stellan Lundqvist, a winegrower, who was born in Sweden, passionate about the world of wine and in love with the island of Mallorca. He set out to produce wines of the highest possible quality, and, so, decided to differentiate himself as a winemaker in what was then a pioneering way, being the first to plant, on a large-scale, Noble Grape varieties typical of France, mainly Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay and Syrah, among others.
In the 80s and 90s, Santa Catarina and its wines attained a prestigious position in the local market, its production gaining a high reputation. For a variety of personal circumstances, Santa Catarina decided to discontinue its wine-producing activity in 2002, renting out all its vineyards and the small winery in Andratx.
After years without the winery producing its own wines, in 2014 Stellan Lundqvist’s family took the decision to recover the project that their father had succeeded in consolidating when they were still children. With the idea of once again setting up a pioneering, different, project, always with the perspective of winegrowing excellence, they decided to take up the reins of directing and managing the winery.
To this end, they took the difficult decision to pull out 49 hectares of vines altogether, that is all the vines at both Son Aloy (Sencelles) and Es Rafal Blanc (Andratx). This was due to the poor condition and deterioration of the rootstocks, as well as their poor-quality yield.
After deep ploughing and preparing the land, it was decided to go in for a selection of native and Mediterranean varieties of vine, with high density planting to achieve low crop yields per plant.
They also decided to start up the project to build a new winery on the Son Aloy estate, where over 90% of Santa Catarina’s grapes are grown.
Without fabulous grapes, you cannot make fabulous wine, so our number-one priority and all our efforts go into achieving the best possible quality grapes, working on each vineyard in a highly specific way.
We are starting afresh, with an exciting project, which we hope will match up to the stature of he who founded it..