From the atlas
Bodegas Godeval
At A Glance
| |
| Appellation | Valdeorras DO, eastern Galicia, northwestern Spain |
| Grape | 100% Godello |
| Style | Dry white, four bottlings from stainless-steel to barrel-aged |
| Founded | 1986 |
| Production | Approximately 150,000 bottles per year |
| Ownership | Majority stake held by Zamora Company since October 2025 |
The Producer
Bodegas Godeval operates from a converted 12th-century monastery called Xagoaza in the Sil River valley, in Valdeorras, the easternmost appellation of Galicia. The winery makes one grape and nothing else: Godello, across four distinct bottlings that span from a fresh, stainless-steel entry wine to a barrel-aged reserve. Founded in 1986, Godeval was the first estate to bottle a commercial monovarietal Godello at a time when the grape was only just returning to the vineyards of the region. Araceli Fernández, whose father Horacio founded the estate, has run the winery since 2006. In October 2025, Zamora Company, the Spanish drinks group behind Ramón Bilbao and Mar de Frades, acquired a majority stake.
Place
Valdeorras sits in the far eastern corner of Galicia, where the Sil River cuts through a canyon landscape of steep slate hillsides and granite outcrops. The valley channels Atlantic moisture from the west while blocking the worst of the rainfall, giving growers more sun hours than the coast and a longer, drier growing season that allows Godello to ripen fully without losing its acid spine. The soils shift between slate and sandy granite depending on the zone, and the slate parcels in particular leave a mineral imprint on the wines, a dry, almost stony quality on the palate that runs through every bottling Godeval produces. The Valdeorras DO is the place on the label; Godello is the grape that defines what goes inside it.
Soil And Site
Godeval farms approximately 40 hectares across Valdeorras, with around 30 currently in production and plans to expand to 50 hectares. The vineyards divide between parcels near the Xagoaza monastery and holdings extended into the municipalities of Vilamartín and Petín. Soils across these sites combine slate and sandy granite, both of which drain freely and keep vine vigour in check. Slate in particular retains heat during the day and releases it overnight, moderating temperature swings that would otherwise push Godello toward flabby, overripe fruit. The mineral character that marks the wines, particularly the saline, almost flinty edge in Cepas Vellas, traces directly to the slate parcels where the oldest vines grow.
Story
Godello had almost disappeared from Valdeorras by the 1970s. The variety had been planted across the region before phylloxera swept through in the 19th century, but replanting favoured higher-yielding grapes and Godello retreated to scattered old parcels that most growers had stopped bothering with. Horacio Fernández Presa was running the Agricultural Extension Agency in O Barco, the main town in Valdeorras, when he decided the grape was worth saving. He launched a programme he called the Revival Plan, gathering surviving Godello cuttings from the remaining old vines and distributing them to growers willing to replant. By 1986, he had accumulated enough material and enough conviction to found a winery dedicated entirely to the variety. He named it Godeval, planted in the monastery grounds at Xagoaza, and bottled the first commercial monovarietal Godello in the region's history. Restoration of the monastery building began in 1988 and took several years; modern production facilities were inaugurated inside the medieval shell in 2009. Horacio died in 2013, but his daughter Araceli had already been managing the estate since 2006. The range has grown from a single wine to four, each one exploring a different register of what Godello can do.
Vineyards And Cellar
Godeval's oldest parcels supply the Cepas Vellas bottling, a selection from vines that bring lower yields and more concentrated fruit than younger plantings. Those grapes are fermented in stainless steel and held on their lees for five months without malolactic fermentation, a combination that builds texture and weight while keeping the acidity fully intact. The absence of malolactic conversion means the wine retains a firm, mouth-sharpening freshness even as the lees contact rounds the mid-palate.
The Revival bottling draws from the old Pancho vineyard and uses cryomaceration, a technique that chills the grapes before fermentation begins. Cold maceration at this stage extracts aromatic compounds from the skins without the harsh tannins that heat would pull out, and it has citrus and herbaceous notes that do not appear in the lees-aged wines.
Godeval 1986, the top-tier bottling first released in 2017, spends four months in 500-litre French oak barrels. The larger format keeps the oak contribution gentle, adding a slight woody depth without masking the mineral frame the slate soils provide.
Wines
Godeval's four wines are all 100% Godello and share the same Valdeorras DO appellation, but each targets a different expression of the grape.
Godeval is the entry-level wine, made from younger estate vines, fermented in stainless steel, and bottled for early drinking. It is the clearest, most direct version of Godello from the estate: citrus-forward, fresh, with light body and no lees or oak influence to complicate the picture.
Cepas Vellas comes from the oldest parcels and goes through five months of lees ageing in stainless steel without malolactic fermentation. The wine is fuller and more textured than the entry Godeval, with ripe apple, melon, and pineapple alongside a stony mineral note, a firmer acid line, and a longer, slightly saline finish. The colour runs to greenish-yellow with golden tones.
Revival, released in 2014, is made from the old Pancho vineyard using cryomaceration. It sits between the entry Godeval and Cepas Vellas in body but above them in aromatic lift, with citrus peel, white flowers, and herbaceous notes over a structured acid frame.
Godeval 1986, first released in 2017 and named for the founding year, is the barrel-aged tier. Four months in 500-litre French oak adds a gentle woody note and builds more mid-palate weight, producing a Godello with greater depth and a longer ageing arc than the other three wines.
In The Glass
Godello in Valdeorras opens with citrus and green apple on the nose, clean and direct, with a mineral note underneath that comes forward more clearly in older-vine and lees-aged wines. In the mouth, the grape's acidity is the first thing that registers, firm and mouth-watering rather than sharp, and it runs through the palate to a dry, mineral finish. Lees contact in Cepas Vellas adds weight and a slight lanolin texture to the mid-palate without softening that acid line, so the wine feels both richer and more precise than the entry Godeval. Revival's cryomaceration tips the aromatic profile toward florals and citrus peel, giving a lighter, more perfumed character with the same structural freshness underneath. Godeval 1986 adds a gentle wood note from the French oak, broadening the palate and softening the finish, but the slate-driven mineral frame remains legible across all four wines.
A Bottle To Understand It
Start with Cepas Vellas. It comes from the oldest vines on the estate, spends five months on its lees in stainless steel, and skips malolactic fermentation entirely, keeping both the texture and the acidity fully present. The wine opens with ripe apple, melon, and a touch of pineapple, and underneath those fruit notes runs a stony, saline mineral quality that comes from the slate parcels where the vines grow. The mid-palate is fuller and more textured than the entry Godeval but carries no oak, so nothing stands between the grape and the slate. The finish is long and dry, with a firm acid line that keeps the wine feeling alive rather than heavy. Cepas Vellas shows what Godello does in the right Valdeorras soil when the cellar steps back and lets the old vines do the work.
Anecdote
In 1993, importer Jorge Ordóñez shipped Godeval's latest vintage to the United States, making it the first Godello to reach the American market commercially. Robert Parker tasted it and wrote in The Wine Advocate that it was "an intriguing wine that should enjoy broad appeal given its freshness, cleanliness, and vibrancy." That praise landed at a precise moment: Godello had been on the brink of extinction in Valdeorras just twenty years earlier, when Horacio Fernández Presa had gathered surviving cuttings from scattered old parcels and built a recovery programme from scratch. By the time Parker's review ran, Godeval had been bottling the grape for seven years from a monastery in the Sil valley that most American wine buyers could not have placed on a map. The review did not make Godeval famous overnight, but it confirmed that Horacio's bet on a nearly lost grape had produced something a serious critic found worth naming.
Final Word
Godeval is where Valdeorras Godello began commercially. The four-wine range gives a clear picture of what the grape can do across different vine ages, cellar techniques, and levels of ambition, from a fresh stainless-steel white to a barrel-aged reserve. Start with Cepas Vellas to understand the old-vine, slate-driven core of what the estate produces.
Sources
- https://godeval.com/?lang=en
- https://spanishwinelover.com/winerie/godeval
- https://winesofgalicia.com/valdeorras
- https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2025/10/zamora-company-acquires-majority-stake-in-godello-pioneer-godeval/
- https://www.vinoseleccion.com/godeval-cepas-vellas-2023
- https://valkyrieselections.com/wine.cfm?wineid=277
- https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/godeval+revival+valdeorras+galicia+spain