It was a challenge, rescheduling our wine-tasting meeting in Tenerife from early evening to late morning.
But I’m always up for a challenge.
The problem was that we had a woman and a man down on our climb up to Aver the previous day.
And that meant postponing that night’s drinking.
But the Canarian wines dulled their senses and eased their pain (and mine).
I return to Canarian wine and that memorable CanariaWays.com http://www.canariaways.com trek https://jimmurtytraveltraveltravel.com/tenerife-walk/ and introduction to the magical multi-faceted North and West of Tenerife.
Because someone else has had the idea too… https://www.hellocanaryislands.com/ and they pinged me their latest news.
We’ve been drinking Canarian wine since the 15th Century while they’ve been drinking it since God put grapes in the ground.
And St Andrew stopped off on the island and got drunk, leaving a lasting legacy… https://jimmurtytraveltraveltravel.com/2019/09/02/tenerife-and-scotland-wave-the-same-flag/
There are 135 different varieties with the volcanic malvasía a particular favourite of William Shakespeare who references it in his plays.
And which I tasted on that fact-finding mission.
You can find it in the off-sales Merchant of Vinos. OK, I made that last bit up.
There are many other native varieties such as the baboso, listán or vijariego, among others.
And needless to say I couldn’t pronounce any of them after drinking my fifth, sixth, seven, eighth… hic!
What distinguishes these wines is the salinity of the sea and volcanic minerals.
And the islanders have been working hard to recover little-known native varieties that have gone on to prove very popular.
The islands have 11 certificates of origin. Tenerife has five of these seals of quality:
Ycoden Daute Isora, Abona, Valle de Güímar, Tacoronte Acentejo and Valle de la Orotava.
Islands’ vine lands
And the beauty is that each island is different:
Lanzarote is known for its volcanic malvasía and La Palma for the aromatic malvasía.
There are also other peculiar wines such as wines from the whistling island La Gomera, made with the forastera variety.
The baboso reds hail from El Hierro, a variety recovered from the brink of extinction, as well as the more extended whites of Diego or Verijadiego.
It’s wine o’clock and guess what I have a bottle of malvasia in the rack and The Scary One’s off work tomorrow!
