The name of this winery has its reason for being. The "lagar", or wine press, does exist, its age written in the stones and the old wood beam used to crush the grapes, in the days when sheer man power was required to squeeze the last drop of juice from the fruit. The old press constitutes the distinctive emblem of this winery, one that bears witness to time-honored, labour-intensive wine-making traditions. Today it may be only a museum piece, but its image is immortalized on the labels and embossed onto the bottles. The winery started out being called Fernández Cervera Hermanos, a winery which belonged to a family whose principal activity was shipbuilding and for whom the winery was more a pastime than a business proposition. In 1988, La Rioja Alta SA, searching for a way to gain a foothold in Galicia bought the majority share and shortly afterwards acquired the entire company, changing its name to Lagar de Fornelos S.A. The winery is small and friendly. It has a capacity to produce 300,000 bottles a year. It is located within the township of Fornelos, its pink façade half-covered in ivy facing out onto the road. The most pleasant part of the winery is the dining and tasting room in the old part of the house, with its impressive antique stone and wood wine press. Behind the estate flows the river Tamuxe and, in summer, one can hear the delighted cries of village children as they go to swim while geese strut near by and trout splash in the river's waters.
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