4Kilos Vinícola

From sheep pasture to the cellar

Francesc Grimalt checks the island fruit as winemaker at 4Kilos Vinícola in Puigverd, outside Felanitx, where the cellar still carries the scale of a converted sheep farm. Francesc Grimalt came to this bench after work as partner and technician at Anima Negra Cellar, a formative Mallorcan post built on close reading of land, cellar, and variety. Since 2006, he has held the winemaking role here with the same practical logic: the Mediterranean gives the terms, and the maker works inside them. Grimalt is the son of a sheepherder, and the fact matters because his language around vines often returns to pressure, restraint, and what happens when the hand does too much. His line, “But not too much, because the sheep tread too much,” belongs to that discipline. It is not decorative pastoralism. It is a way of thinking about intervention, about how easily force can flatten what a place is already prepared to say.

Callet, Call Vermell, and old vessels

The program at 4Kilos works mainly through organically and biodynamically farmed vineyards across Mallorca, including trusted growers rather than a single estate holding. Grimalt builds with local varieties such as Callet, Manto Negro, and Fogoneu, alongside Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Syrah when the vintage asks for it. The winery sits outside a single Denominación de Origen pattern because its fruit reaches across northern and southern Mallorca; the working category is Vi de la Tierra Mallorca. Fermentations rely on indigenous yeasts on the grape skins. The vessels keep the garage origin visible: open barrels, stainless steel tanks, old foudres, large barrels, and, in the first cuvée, old milk fridges. New oak does not lead the method. The flagship 4 Kilos red is raised for 14 months in open barrels of 225 liters, a proportion that keeps the wood present as structure rather than polish. Call Vermell, the local iron-rich clay-loam soil around Felanitx, gives the house one of its clearest names and one of its firmest signatures.

A quiet finca with the work in view

The room at 4Kilos is not arranged around spectacle. It feels like a small rural finca on the outskirts of Felanitx, with vineyard and farmland around it, a farmyard memory in the walls, and a cellar that has kept its bohemian garage edge rather than trading it for polished tourism infrastructure. The pace is quiet. Tastings sit close to the work, which suits wines made from many parcels and a narrow set of decisions. The converted sheep farm gives the place its measure: practical surfaces, vessels chosen for use, and labels whose modernity does not erase the agricultural origin. In the glass, the house returns to Callet, Manto Negro, and the red clay of Call Vermell.