Andorra
Cristina Tor
Co-owner of Casa Auvinyà (Auvinyà, Sant Julià de Lòria, Andorra)
Casa Auvinyà is one of the five Andorra wineries that carry on a daily struggle to preserve wines from the high mountains.
Cristina has a degree in Geography and History, but now, instead of spending her time among books, she spends it among vines. When Andorra's Ministry of Agriculture introduced a law with aid for agricultural and livestock projects as additions to economic activities in the mountains, Cristina and her brother Esteve and partner Elena (both engineers, the former a mountain engineer and the latter an agricultural engineer) decided to retrieve Auvinyà's winemaking tradition. They began the project in 2005, and three years later they were joined by wine expert Martí Magrinyà.
This winery, located at an altitude of 1,200 m in the village of Auvinyà (Sant Julià de Lòria), now has 54,000 vines planted, with an output of 3,000 bottles of red and white wines.