Beautiful Wines from Tenerife (Canary Islands): Viñátigo, Ignios, Monje, and Tajinaste.
3/18/15 -
(Approaching Mount Teide (Tenerife), the highest point in Spain. Photo by Ariana Rolich.)
The Canary Islands started their ascent from the eastern Atlantic more than 20 million years ago, just 100 kilometers off the western coast of Africa near the southern border of Morocco. The gradual emergence of the volcanic island chain began with Fuerteventura and Lanzarote in the east and continued with Gran Canaria, Tenerife, and La Gomera 11 to 15 million years ago. The youngest, westernmost islands of La Palma and El Hierro are geological babies, where subaerial (above sea level) activity dates back less than 2 million years. The entire archipelago is still developing, with volcanic activity documented on all of the islands in the last million years and eruptions on four of them in the last 500 years, contributing to the development of some of the most extreme and interesting vineyards in the world.
Each island exhibits its own geological character, breathtaking beauty, and viticultural challenges. Vines of Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian origin were transported to the Canary Islands by colonial settlers beginning in the late 1400s. Determination to succeed at cultivating vines over the centuries has solidified an unlikely and impressive rapport between winegrowers and potentially hostile forces. Violent eruptions, rugged terrains, precipitous altitudes, and relentless winds are all countered (if not embraced) in unwavering pursuit of local winemaking. The devastating phylloxera louse never reached the Canary Islands, allowing vines to grow on their original rootstocks to this day. Some winemakers attribute their wines' profound minerality to this unfettered flow between plant and soil.
On a recent trip to the Canaries, we had the opportunity to learn from Juan Jesús Méndez of Bodegas Viñátigo on Tenerife, who is a foundational figure in the region. Proud descendent of Tenerife winemakers, leader in the Las Islas Canarias DOP (Denominación de Origen Protegida), and a professor of chemistry and oenology, Méndez has worked tirelessly to rejuvenate the region's focus on traditional grape varieties and to recover old vines.
Most importantly, it was Méndez who conducted the pioneering research into the identity, origins, and behavior of more than 80 local Canary grape varieties: Listán Blanco is Palomino, Gual is Madeira's Bual, Listán Negro is the Mission grape, Baboso is Alfrocheiro, the list goes on... Nobody knows what Tintilla and Marmajuelo are. Méndez taught us that both grapes, like the varieties listed above, undoubtedly hail from the Iberian mainland. Yet unlike the others, the mainland equivalents of Tintilla and Marmajuelo were wiped out by phylloxera. The Canary Islands are therefore the only known source for both.
(Juan Jesús Méndez talks Tintilla in the Valle el Palmar, Tenerife.)
Méndez and his wife, oenologist Elena Batista, maintain a library of the traditional Canary grapes outside of Viñátigo's lovingly designed winery in La Guancha, and vinify and study them all. Their varietal wines are lush, textured, and thoroughly delicious expressions of Tenerife terroir, grown anywhere from 100 meters above sea level (Gual) to 600 meters and higher (Tintilla).
We have many wines to recommend from our other friends on Tenerife, as well. Viñátigo's neighbor, Borja Pérez González, makes varietal wines of exceptional purity and nuance for his daring Ignios Orígenes project. González grew up making wine with his father and diligently carries out the work of his family's winery, while conducting meticulous and often experimental vinifications of traditional varieties at the same time for Ignios. When we visited Borja last year, he led us through a wild and beautiful tangle of Vijariego Negro vines at 780 meters in the foothills of Mount Teide, which he had been painstakingly recuperating for several years. The first vintage of wine from these vines is here! New vintages of Ignios' popular Listán Negro and Baboso have also arrived, as well as a white wine made from Marmajuelo, which is as bold, complicated, and exotic a wine as Tenerife has to offer.
(Borja Pérez González with his vines at 780 meters (left); extremely old vines at Monje (right).)
The Canary Islands have a great tradition of making sweet wines of many shades. Felipe Monje, heir to the historic Monje winery and some of the island's oldest vines, and the energetic Agustín García Farráis of Bodegas Tajinaste offer some of the best! Please see the notes below for more details on grape varieties, terroir, and winemaking. Cheers! Ariana Rolich
