2022 Canary Island Offerings from Envinate

Year after year, we fall in love with the wines of Envinate, a collaborative project founded by four winemakers and friends who met while in enology school in Alicante. Roberto Santana, Alfonso Torrente, Laura Ramos, and José Martínez make wines from choice plots in the Canary Islands, Ribeira Sacra, Murcia, and Almansa, intending to express the unique terroirs of each region. They have eliminated all invasive chemical treatments in the vineyards and are  producing wines with methods in the cellar that transmit the character of their plots. To this end, they pick by hand, ferment with native yeasts, and ferment and age in old wood and concrete.  As they progress on their journey, they have been honing their winemaking skills, and deepening their relationship with the vineyards they tend, and the unique terroirs and grapes they work with.

Year after year, we fall in love with the wines of Envinate, a collaborative project founded by four winemakers and friends who met while in enology school in Alicante. Roberto Santana, Alfonso Torrente, Laura Ramos, and José Martínez make wines from choice plots in the Canary Islands, Ribeira Sacra, Murcia, and Almansa, intending to express the unique terroirs of each region. They have eliminated all invasive chemical treatments in the vineyards and are  producing wines with methods in the cellar that transmit the character of their plots. To this end, they pick by hand, ferment with native yeasts, and ferment and age in old wood and concrete.  As they progress on their journey, they have been honing their winemaking skills, and deepening their relationship with the vineyards they tend, and the unique terroirs and grapes they work with.

Collectively, the Envinate team decided in 2020 to stop using temperature control in the cellar, and they started to work with shorter macerations with their wines. The change from using temperature control reveals the confidence that they have in their work, and in their parcels, which they have now tended for many years. To some degree, the shorter macerations may be in response to the challenging conditions, such as drought in their vineyards, but seems to clearly also be an approach towards a delicate style. Since the 2020 vintage, the wines are a touch more "ready" and graceful, and the 2022 vintage seems to us like the most remarkably "approachable" vintage ever for their Canary Island wines. The wines are notably open and charming, with more balance and less of the funky reduction-related aromatics or the tightness of previous vintages like 2019 and 2020.

For a bit of a look at past vintages, for those who are holding bottles, or for those curious about Canary Island vintages, here is a summary of the past 9 years, written by our former colleague and member of the José Pastor imports team, Ben Fletcher.

2023: Tenerife’s fire year, and an intensely dry and hot vintage. The Arafo fire will have consequences for the vintage that aren’t yet clear, but hopefully the wines will be very good. All grapes were harvested before the fire started.

2022: A dry and difficult vintage in Orotava and Taganan, but at least the ground water had been restored in ’22, so yields were not so seriously reduced as in ’20, and the wines are perhaps less intensely informed by the lack of water. An excellent year in Santiago del Teide.

2021: The drought finally broke, with winter rains replenishing ground water. Disease pressure in Taganan. An outstanding  vintage in Orotava - particularly Palo Blanco, but also a really exceptional vintage for Migan.

2020: Brutally dry. Continued drought led to changes in pruning and steep yield reductions. Earliest harvests ever. Depletion of water reserves really started to hit a point of concern in 2020 - all of my notes from Roberto Santana are concerns about water and the future. Santiago del Teide is always least affected by heat and drought, but even there this was a notably dry year.

2019: Another dry and hot vintage. I’ve really enjoyed the wines from Santiago del Teide in this vintage.

2018: A dry and hot vintage, but one with very good results in Taganan owing to a somewhat cooler growing season than ’17 and ‘19.

2017: A very dry vintage, and also hot and sunny. Another year where the Santiago del Teide wines really shone, and also the wines from Taganan.

2016: A dry vintage, but not as hot as the following years. A very good vintage in Orotava and in Santiago del Teide - the Benje Blanco is a particular favorite.

2015: The first year in a punishing dry cycle. Tenerife never gets lots of rain, but 2015-2020 was unheard-of in terms of drought, with basically no rain in spring/summer and only very limited replenishment in the winter. Pressure on the vines steadily increased.