Rebirth and Resilience — Heroic Viticulture in Spain’s Canary Islands — Good Beer Hunting

"We shouldn't even be able to grow grapes here—this is a fucking desert," Rayco Fernandez shouts as the wind picks up, blowing my hat to the ground. We’re inside a volcano, El Chupadero, in La Geria, Lanzarote, the easternmost of Spain's Canary Islands, trying to catch the last bit of sun descending behind the crater. My Birkenstocked feet sink into thick volcanic ash, known locally as rofe, crunching with each step; tiny black lapilli pebbles get stuck between my toes.

My eyes try to adjust to the scene before me: a massive pit, nearly 65 feet in diameter and 7 feet deep, with a single gnarled old vine sprawled at its center. Along the edge of the pit, a small stone wall protects the vine from the strong winds. But it's not just one pit—or hoyo, as they’re called—it's hundreds, literally as far as the eye can see. I am dumbstruck.

Located in the Atlantic Ocean, just off the West African coast and a stone's throw from the Sahara Desert, all evidence would point to the impossibility of growing grapes on the Canary Islands, let alone squeezing any meaningful amount of juice out of them. A region that experiences low rainfall, high temperatures, fierce winds, and the occasional volcanic eruptions, the seven islands have been making wine for the past 500 years. What's more, wine was the backbone of the local economy until the mid 1800s.

Blessed and cursed by this stunning natural environment, generation after generation has adapted the vine to these extreme conditions, and in so doing, crafted truly unique wines. After roughly 200 years of decline, these volcanic wines are once again the talk of the wine world today.

This is my third visit to the Canary Islands, and the longest. I’m here to attend a conference, like the two times before, but instead of staying a night or two, this time I’m here for a full week to learn about the wines. While researching for my trips, I came across article after article that spoke of a rebirth, a revival, a new wave of small-scale producers putting the Canary Islands back on the world's wine map. Sommeliers, merchants, and journalists are talking about a revolution, and the Spanish wine writer Luis Gutiérrez has described the islands as "an old wine region come back to life." In the press, the energy is palpable.

But on the ground, there is a very different energy. Standing in the Chupadero crater, feeling small and insignificant in this magnificent landscape, I remember the words of a grower: "We have to defend this." Initially, I thought little of it. But this time around it became evident that rebirth was just one part of the story, a more marketable one. Resilience is the other.

Currently producing just 10 million liters of wine—a tiny drop in a very large wine sea—the stakes have never been higher for independent growers and artisanal producers here. Since 2010, the land dedicated to viticulture has gone from about 48,000 acres to just 16,700 acres, a massive 60% loss, with the greatest drop occurring in the last five years. Paradoxically, just as a rebirth is under way, the region's future is on a knife edge.

Heroic viticulture, then, a term often used in the wine world to describe grape growing in extreme locations, takes on new meaning here.

"There's another site I want you to see," says Fernandez. We hop into his truck and head to Juan Bello Valley, the vineyard where he sources fruit for a sweet Moscatel wine called Chaboco.

Fernandez is a sommelier and wine merchant who founded Puro Rofe Viñateros, a collective winery of sorts, in 2017. Working with local organic growers, his aim was not only to produce great wines, but to preserve the viticultural treasures of the island, too. The reasons are twofold: First, he was tired of seeing Lanzarote wine reduced to cheap, easy-drinking, beachside plonk that was created specifically for low-cost tourists. Second, he was frustrated by the industry's disrespect for growers, offering ridiculously low prices that resulted in the abandonment of traditional Lanzarote vineyards.

Rayco Fernandez of Puro Rofe

Ten minutes later we arrive at Juan Bello, and at first, it seems there's nothing here, just a few boulders and protruding volcanic rocks with scarce vegetation. We walk across desolate lava-flow fields with the howling wind at our backs. And then I see it.

Fernandez is standing above a massive crack in the earth. Stunned and bewildered, I can see yellow and green leaves and a few wooden stakes dug into the ground. The vineyard—if we can call it is that—is found deep within this narrow volcanic fissure. He explains that it's called a chaboco. It's unlike anything I have ever seen.

In the mid 18th century, Lanzarote was rocked by a series of volcanic eruptions that gave the island some of its unique features, including these chabocos, as well as the rofe in La Geria. Over time, farmers began planting various fruit trees, such as fig and grape, inside the chabocos, taking advantage of their natural characteristics: The crack protects the vine from harsh winds while also collecting moisture—vital in Lanzarote, where the average annual rainfall is a measly 6 inches—which allows the vine to survive.

From my vantage point, it looks extremely tight and low inside. The vine's thick, twisted trunk and cordons have adapted to the tiny space. I try to imagine what harvest must be like.

"So, picking grapes in there?" I ask.

Fernandez, halfway through his cigarette, lets out a laugh.

One day, after years of searching, it finally happened: A vineyard came up for sale in Lanzarote. At the time, Daniel Ramirez and Marta Labanda were working in wineries in mainland Spain, but when they heard of the sale, they didn't hesitate. They signed, moved to Lanzarote, and set up Titerok-Akaet, a winery dedicated to recovering centenary vines and producing wines which reflect their terroir.

Daniel Ramirez, co-owner of Titerok-Akaet

We meet at their Barranco del Obispo vineyard in La Geria, a small parcel located alongside the busy two-lane highway where most of Lanzarote's larger commercial and touristy wineries are located. Prime real estate—they lucked out.

On the surface it might seem that way, but Ramirez explains that they were only able to negotiate a long-term contract because of family connections. If not, it would be impossible. No one really sells, he says. Instead, owners simply abandon the land and wait for property prices to increase, hoping to cash in on the local tourism bonanza. While La Geria is officially a protected natural park, making construction illegal, several cases have proven otherwise. Meanwhile, historic vineyards have been abandoned and left in disarray. Producers like Titerok-Akaet, wanting and willing to own but unable to do so, have to contend with putting in the backbreaking work to restore vineyards that aren't actually theirs.

"When we started working here two years ago, everything was covered in wild shrubs and vegetation. The vines were covered in rofe," Ramirez says, wiping the sweat from his brow. "We’ve had to hack away at it, and slowly, we’re shoveling the rofe out of each hoyo to give the vine space to grow. We’ve had to repair the stonewalls. It's a lot of work."

Titerok-Akaet co-owner Marta Labanda

According to a recent study done by the Mesa Vitícola de Lanzarote, the local viticulture organization, digging up one hectare of hoyos takes 460 hours, or about two months’ work for one person. With extremely low yields per vine and the price of a kilo of grapes under €2.50 ($2.70), this makes viticulture in La Geria quite expensive.

For Labanda and Ramirez, it's not just the economic burden, traditional viticulture also comes with a steep learning curve. The free-standing twisted vines require expertise and know-how that is no longer readily available. "There hasn't been a transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next," Ramirez says. For them, this means more trial and error, more time, and ultimately more costs.

In other parts of mainland Spain, like Rioja or Ribera del Duero, the terrain allows for mechanization and producers benefit from economies of scale. One can easily find a Rioja or Ribera Gran Reserva, once considered the highest category of Spanish wine, for under €5 ($5.50) in supermarkets across the country. This makes wines from Lanzarote expensive for locals. With roughly 3 million visitors per year, the tourist market is the golden goose for the industry. But the low-cost visitor at an all-inclusive resort isn't looking for more than a playground and wines that wash down easily. This is why neither Puro Rofe nor Titerok-Akaet sell their wines locally, and sell very little in mainland Spain. Instead, all of their sales are in international markets.

Exports have always been a vital part of the Canary Islands wine trade. Ever since the first vines were planted on Canarian soil by colonists from Italy, Portugal, and Spain in the 14th century, the islands’ wines have reached all corners of the world.

Vitis vinifera, the modern grape vine, quickly found a home in the Canaries, sustaining the local economy for more than 300 years. But geopolitical factors caused a boom-and-bust cycle. The final bust came in the late 1800s, when a double whammy of diseases—oidium and mildew—attacked the vines, bringing the local wine industry to its knees. A once thriving industry dried up. Production decreased dramatically, historic wineries folded, and the remaining producers turned inwards, making wines primarily for the local market.

But with the onset of industrialization in the 1960s, Spanish agriculture changed radically. Unable to compete on global markets, many small-scale farmers left the countryside for the city. In the Canaries, bananas became the primary crop just as the dictatorial regime of Francisco Franco promoted mass tourism as a way to stimulate economic growth.

Today, tourism is the Canaries’ biggest industry, accounting for a whopping 35% of GDP. The Islands receive some 16 million tourists annually, wildly outnumbering the 2 million residents, with Tenerife receiving the bulk of visitors. It's here in the sleepy town of Santiago del Teide, at the foot of Spain's highest volcano, Mount Teide, that I meet Roberto Santana, winemaker and one-fourth of Envínate—the instigators of a new wave of Canary wines.

"We make ‘vinos Atlanticos Canarios,’" Santana says. "This is who we are."

For a first-time drinker of Envínate wines, the experience can be a bit disorienting. Reds with distinct smoky-peppery aromas, fine tannins and a lightness of being, or saline whites with mouthwatering acidity, all underlaid by a rocky mineral note which Santana describes as volcanic. It's a profile that challenges one's senses, or at least one's preconceptions of what Spanish wine should taste like.

Founded in 2008 by Santana and three friends, Envínate makes wines in four Spanish wine regions, with Tenerife the source of half of its production. Their focus was to take wine back to its most basic: the land which it comes from and the vines which give it life. While this may seem a simple concept today, the 1980s ushered in an era of often heavily manipulated wines that would appeal to the tastes and preferences of the influential wine critic Robert Parker. The overripe, heavily oaked, and highly extracted wine style stripped wines of their authenticity and also resulted in a very homogenized wine world.

Santana admits that Envínate was influenced by trends at the beginning, but a search for quality came hand in hand with (re)discovering its identity. The four founders soon came to realize that Spain's treasures—old vines and native varieties—were the key to producing truly great wines. And that when it came to winemaking, less was more. Beyond adding sulfur dioxide before bottling, they make natural wines, with no chemical inputs or other additives, which strive to reflect the zones, plots, and parcels where the grapes are grown.

At the entrance of the winery, a large poster rests on a wooden pallet with a map of Tenerife and the terroirs of Envínate's wines: Taganana, La Orotava, and Santiago del Teide. Santana tells me about the differences in soils and subsoils, growing systems, climate, aspects and even the growers who tend the vines. We taste through all of the terroirs, and the experience is exhilarating. Mineral, saline, and pure fruit is a running theme, but each wine is deliciously unique. Tasting with Santana is to witness a master at work: Focused, fascinated, and ever curious, he seems to approach each sample as if it were completely new.

In his book "The New Vignerons," the Spanish wine critic Luis Gutiérrez writes that it was Santana who started the wine revolution in the Canary Islands, "[waking] it up from its dormant state." He also credits Envínate in laying the foundation for a new Spanish wine scene, one that champions old vines and authentic identity. But all of this comes with a shift in mentality, Santana explains. It's not just about soils and sites, it's also about sustaining a community.

"We need to support the people who work with us, to ensure that they have decent and dignified work," he says.

On the steep slopes of Valle de la Orotava, on the northern coast of Tenerife, there's a peculiar vine system that is on the edge of extinction. It's unlike anything in the world, a unique selling point in the global wine market. But for those who tend these vines, the situation is much more nuanced.

At Hacienda Perdida, or the Lost Estate, I meet Dolores Cabrera, owner and winemaker of Bodega La Araucaria. Appropriately named, the small parcel is hidden from the main road in a lush landscape. The air is humid and the clouds above block what would otherwise be a sunny day. Here, among tall grass, green clover, and white and yellow flowers, Cabrera shows me her cordon trenzando vines. Just as their "braided cord" name implies, they are twisted and tangled vines that grow horizontally, suspended with iron poles every few feet.

Unique to La Orotava, cordon trenzando vine canes are tied back and wrapped around their roots, forming large arms that grow up to 65 feet in length. These vines, many of which are over 100 years old, are both beautiful and mind-boggling. Cabrera explains that the vine's braid can be repositioned so other crops can grow in the soil where it rested. Traditionally, after the grape harvest, the cordons were rotated 90 degrees so that the soil was free to plant with winter crops, such as potatoes, then rotated back to their original position to continue the growing cycle come spring. On an island of steep slopes and finite area, this approach makes the best use of the land.

An agronomist and organic farmer, Cabrera is at home here among the vines she has tended for more than two decades. She runs her hands along the plant, explaining how the vine's canes and shoots intertwine, showing where they would be pruned and tied. She says that it's easy with a smile, though it's clear that these are not low-maintenance vines.

The knowledge required to work these vines has been passed down through generations by the people who tended them, many of whom were women. Cabrera tells me that in La Orotava, women traditionally tended the cordon trenzado vines, because it was considered a menial job. It could be completed alongside domestic work and served as a way to earn a bit of cash.

Indeed, women have played a vital role throughout Spanish viticulture, sustaining old vines and maintaining traditional techniques when a kilo of grapes was virtually worthless, when men left for the cities in search of more profitable work. Even today, as the Spanish wine industry reclaims its lost heritage and restores both the economic and symbolic value of old vines, women's contributions have yet to be acknowledged. Cabrera says that's why she recently dedicated a wine—a blend of local varieties Listan Blanco and Listan Negro—to women in the fields, which she plans on calling Mujer.

She lowers the wine thief, a long plastic pipe, into the barrel, extracting a stunning ruby-colored wine. We taste it together.

"If I were a man," she says, "I’d have been given awards and recognition for the work I’ve done."

She wipes a tear from her face. For a few moments we are silent, savoring the wine.

As I leave La Perdida I have a strange sensation: a feeling of joy with a touch of sadness. Cabrera defends this traditional system, working organically and sustainably, but she is swimming against the current. Because cordon trenzado is so labor-intensive, it is unprofitable, making it a very vulnerable practice. Over the years, many growers have ripped out the old cordon trenzado vines. I feel a huge sense of admiration for her, and respect for the work that she does.

Carved into the mountain, I sit at the tasting bar on the bottom floor of Bodegas Viñátigo's gravity-fed cellar in the town of La Guancha. It's here that I first tried a wine made from a local variety, Vijariego Blanco, a white wine that tasted of pear, lime, and citrus fruit with bracing acidity. This second time around, I try another Vijariego Blanco. This time there's citrus and apple, a touch of waxiness, a hint of nuttiness, and a textured palate with mouthwatering acidity running through it like electricity.

Behind the bar is Jorge Méndez, a fifth-generation grapegrower and winemaker at Bodegas Viñátigo. He is the newest of the new wave in Tenerife, and we’re trying his first wine, Xercos, recently released on the market under his own name. The word Xercos is what the indigenous Guanche people called the pieces of animal skin they used to walk through the lava. In many ways, Méndez looks to the past as a way to carve the future.

"We shouldn't be trying to copy other places, but find our own identity," he says. By this point, we’ve spent well over an hour talking away like old friends. His knowledge of the industry is deep and thorough—he describes himself as "an informed drunk"—and his enthusiasm for wine contagious. But Méndez is something of an anomaly in the trade: He's young, and has entered an industry few people his age want to work in. Low prices for crops, low wages, and backbreaking work in the fields make agriculture unattractive, pushing young people to the cities. Méndez attributes his love for viticulture and wine from his family, but also through traveling and working harvests abroad. In particular, he's been shaped by his experiences with small-scale grower-producers in the south of Chile, my birth country, who are recovering their viticultural heritage, and with that reclaiming their identity.

Méndez's father, Viñátigo founder Juan Jesús Méndez Siverio, has spent the last 30 years rescuing local varieties from obscurity and propagating vines to ensure their survival. In doing so, he's been the driving force in bringing back the varietal mosaic that many wine lovers have come to know of the islands’ wines: varieties like Marmajuelo, Gual, Viajariego Blanco, and Negramoll that grow in their fields.

Before I leave, Méndez shows me the many vines, old and new, that cover their estate. Like a garden of Eden, vines of all varieties creep and crawl, hang and hover, and even grow on wires. He explains that each growing system has its history, as do the varieties found on the islands. For example, the high pergola training comes from Portuguese colonists, while head-trained bush vines from the Spanish.

We walk beneath a green canopy of vines that remind me of my grandmother's backyard in Chile.

"There's an emotional element to all of this," he says. "For too long we haven't cared about this."

In the 1980s, the modern era dawned on Spanish wine. Under the guise of modernity and competition, producers were offered subsidies to switch to wire trellises and plant international varieties, such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Syrah.

When the first Canarian denominations of origin were founded in the 1990s, they established parameters that quickly changed the local wine style. In line with the commercial trends and tastes of those times, traditional, oxidative white wines fell out of fashion, as well as the lighter, mineral reds. Large wooden vats were replaced with temperature-controlled stainless steel tanks and French barriques.

"This is when my father began changing the equipment," says Victoria Torres Pecis, winemaker at Bodegas Matias i Torres in La Palma. "We had to adapt to the standards." Today, there isn't a stainless-steel tank in sight, save a small tank for experimentation, as she's gone back to using the traditional pine and chestnut vats.

It's my final day in the Canaries and my last visit is to Torres Pecis’ cellar in Fuencaliente, on the southern tip of the island. She may be part of the new wave, but Matias i Torres, her family winery, is the oldest on the island, founded in 1855. She is part of a long line of growers and winemakers, settling into the role of proprietor in 2015.

As soon as I arrive, we hop into her four-wheel-drive and begin the downward descent to the steep Machuqueras vineyard, one of the oldest parcels. Along the way, she tells me about the region—its soils, its history, and the many changes since the 1960s. As the truck winds down the rocky road, I learn that Victoria had to beg her father to let her work in the vineyards and how she took over the family winery when he passed. She says that banana plantations have encroached on traditional viticultural spaces and growers have less governmental support than ever. Because of the recent drought, the vines have been stressed to limits never seen before—for some parcels, her production hasn't just been low, but nonexistent. She tells me that in the past decade, the rate of abandoned vineyards has been dramatic.

She pulls to a stop when we can see las Machuqueras: a beautiful vineyard with the self-standing, low-trained vines called rastreras that crawl like snakes along the black soil.

"You know that saying, that when we die, we take nothing with us?" she asks. "Here, when a farmer dies, they take the vines." She stares into the horizon. A tear rolls down her face, and then another. I cry with her and quickly look away, busying myself with taking notes.

In a world where one hardly knows where their food is grown and the majority of us are disconnected from the natural and agricultural world, this may seem trivial. But for those who work every day in the fields, on the land of their ancestors, this is grief: a profound loss that chips away at the very foundations of the community and its collective history.

In La Palma, as in the other islands, the pressures and challenges facing growers are enormous. According to the Association of Winegrowers and Winemakers of the Canary Islands, an average of 300 hectares, or 741 acres, of vines are being lost every year due to the lack of profitability. Banana and avocado farms, accelerated real estate development, and an ever-expanding tourism industry are all eating away at traditional grape-growing land. In addition to the severe impacts of a warming planet, these rapid changes all threaten the future of Canary Islands wine.

This generation of local grape growers is facing a moment of existential change, where forces threaten a way of life and a way of being. Wine is culture, and because it does not exist in a vacuum, separate from the political, social, and economic conditions whence it grows, the work and influence of this new wave of producers goes beyond just making outstanding wines. Wine producers in the Canary Islands are hanging on to more than a livelihood. They are attempting to mend the social fabric of their region. They are doing so by asking important questions: Who are we, and what are our values?

The recovery of a collective identity—or rather, the effort to build a new one that is deeply rooted in a long-forgotten past—is what makes this revival exciting. By refusing to let their culture fade into obscurity, Canary Island wine producers are not only introducing the world to wines of incredible beauty, but asserting a sense of agency in the face of great challenges. This struggle is part of their story, and it deserves to be told alongside the one of rebirth.