HISTORY
Old legends and state-of-the-art technology
Castell Miquel was once created for viticulture: According to the legend, an angel appeared to a Majorcan farmer and advised him to plant a vine on this spot. The farmer followed the advice and the vines developed – according to the legend – into the best on the island.
But the competition was getting bigger and bigger: Soon, Castell Miquel was one of very many bodegas on the island. When Majorca was then revaged by a serious plague of phylloxera, around 97% of the former wine-growing areas were converted into almond plantations and farmland – and the fertile wine terraces of Castell Miquel were forgotton.
Until Prof. Michael Popp discovered the run-down Castellet in the middle of the nature reserve in the 1990s. The condition of the bodega was desolate, but the old vines on the centuries-old dry walls flourished as ever.
It was a stroke of fate that this location and this man encountered one other: A vineyard with fertile soils, a unique location in the middle of the Tramuntana Mountains and a man who devotes his life to plant research – and had both the financial recources and the passion to create a small paradise from this place to hope.
Today, Castell Miquel has become precisely this small Garden of Eden which Prof. Popp saw at that time before his mind´s eye. And it is the only bodega on Marjorca which is situated on a slope – in the middle of lush green mountains.