Tenerife - Borja Perez

Tenerife is the largest and most central of the seven Canary Islands, 2,000 km (1,240 m) from Madrid but 100 to 400 km from the coast of Africa. 

The tropical climate with a mean year-round temperature of 22 ºC (71.6 ºF) and long sunny days attracts six million tourists a year, mainly from the UK and Germany. Some producers claim that Tenerife is the second sunniest wine region in the world after Chile’s Atacama desert. The highest mountain in Spain, the Teide, dominates Tenerife and reaches an elevation of 3,718 m (12,200 ft).

The 8,000 ha (19,770 acres) of vineyards on Tenerife (5,000 of them producing appellation wine) are divided into five appellations: Yconde-Daute-Isora, Valle de la Orotava and Tacoronte-Acentejo in the north and Abona and Valle de Güimar in the south. This mosaic of appellations makes sense for locals but can be a bit confusing for others.

This may be the main reason for the creation of the 70-strong producer association. They aim to build a global brand called Tenerife Wine coexisting with the appellation system but simplifying the message to consumers. The brand was launched in July 2017 and provided me with a good reason to travel there and accept the opportunity to blind taste a selection of the best wines chosen by Tenerife Wine producers. It is still too early to know the impact of the new association but joining forces in order to better promote their wines surely makes total sense.

Conversely, the diversity of the island is obvious as you travel round the Teide extinct volcano from east to west. The north (Yconde, Orotava and Tacoronte appellations) are much more humid and rainy (400–700 mm/15.7–27.6 in a year), thanks to thick clouds brought from the Azores by trade winds that are blocked by El Teide. This singular climatic effect can be seen clearly from the top of the mountain and generates a beautiful landscape known as el mar de nubes, the sea of clouds.

The southern part (Abona and Güimar) is drier (300 to 400 mm of rain a year) and historically has been a white wine area planted mainly with Listán Blanco. In the village of Vilaflor in the appellation of Abona are the island’s highest vineyards, planted from 1,300 to 1,600 m. Volcanic soils are predominant especially in the north. They have great drainage, retain humidity and also encourage roots to go deep in search of precious water. In fact yields on the island are really low, ranging from 3,000 to 4,000 kg/ha, and mechanisation is almost impossible in most vineyards.

One of the particularities of Tenerife is the abundant array of local grape varieties, most of them ungrafted as phylloxera never hit the island. Some of the oldest vineyards in Ycoden are propagated by layering, an ancient reproductive technique abandoned post-phylloxera. Today some producers are banking on single varieties, in contrast to the traditional field blends, allowing us a better understanding of their individual characteristics.

Listán Blanco and Listán Negro are the principal grapes, mostly produced in a delicate style. However, after the tasting, my preference was for the powerful, smoky and sometimes leathery Baboso Negro (known as Alfrocheiro in Portugal) and the mineral and chalky Vijariego Negro (Sumoll). As for the whites, I don’t have a clear favourite. The fragrant and aromatic Malvasias shone as clearly as usual, while an electrifying blend of Verdello and Albillo garnered 18 points from me. Marmajuelo demonstrates that it can be successfully produced in a ripe, broad style. Negramoll (which goes under many names elsewhere), the main grape in Tacoronte Acentejo, seems not to attract the attention of producers; just four of all the wines tasted had a tiny percentage of it. The recovery of Listán Prieto, the well-travelled Mission of California and País of Chile, is indeed very good news and today it is producing attractive red and sparkling wine.

Emigration has been a problem, and land is extremely expensive compared with some other less expensive regions in Spain: up to €70,000 a hectare (eight times the price of some other Spanish agricultural land). You will understand, therefore, why I am so happy to see so many new wine projects with some old vineyards being recovered, making a quality-oriented wine industry a reality.

TENERIFE WINE'S HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE...

Finally I would like to share a great moment of my visit to the island. I had the opportunity to meet Carlos Cologan, a historian and researcher with ancient British roots. He has recently published a 700-page magisterial book on the commercial trade in Tenerife wine, just 1760 to 1797. It is a spectacular work based on researching an old archive containing tens of thousands of letters from 1625 to the end of nineteenth century. The archive is owned by the Cologan family itself and it is kept in a very atmospheric location known as the historical archive of Santa Cruz de Tenerife province.

The archive evokes days gone by. Many of us will first have been made aware of the glorious days of wine from the Canary Islands thanks to William Shakespeare (1564–1616) who, in Twelfth Night, has Toby Belch calling for ‘a cup of canary’. It is known that in 1630 almost half of Tenerife’s Malvasia was marketed through London.

But the real discovery in Cologan’s research contradicts the long-held view that Malvasia was the most important Canary Islands wine. The records show that in the eighteenth century the most traded wine by far, energetically traded in fact throughout the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, was called ‘Vidueño’ (meaning wine coming from all sort of grapes) or ‘Teneriffe’, based not on Malvasia but on Listán grapes. This is a new finding and changes the paradigm of Spanish wine history.

Two more extraordinary findings by Cologan are a letter from George Washington that confirms his preference for Tenerife wine over beer for his troops during the American civil war, and an agreement from the British First Fleet about loading Tenerife wines for the trip to Botany Bay in order to found the penal colony that became the first European settlement in Australia. In his book, Cologan also explores the important relationship between Tenerife and the powerful East India Company.

* This investigative report was written by Feran Centelles, Spanish wine specialist and international wine judge.