Expert’s choice: The Canary Islands

If you were to develop from scratch a prototype of a wine region designed to appeal to the world’s most influential and fashionable sommeliers, you might well come up with a blueprint that sounds something like a description of the Canary Islands.

Scroll down for a selection of 18 Canary Island wines to try

The list of elements in Europe’s most southerly winemaking region is just, in emoji speak, ‘chef’s kiss’. Volcanic soils. Ungrafted vines so old they pre-date, in many cases, the phylloxera plague that swept through Europe (but not the Canary Islands) from the late 19th century. An unusual collection of grape varieties that you cannot find, as a group, anywhere else in the world. Talented, natural-oriented winemakers obsessed with low-intervention winemaking in out-of-the-way, extreme places. A patchwork of topographies, altitudes (including some of the highest vineyards in Europe) and Atlantic-influenced microclimates allowing for a Burgundian level of minutely focused terroir expression. Some genuinely unique traditional viticultural practices still in use… I could go on.

Reputation transformation

All of which helps explain why there has been such a buzz around Canary Island wines in the trendier corners of the wine world over the past decade, a period during which its previous vinous reputation – as a purveyor of so-so wines aimed at the tourist trade on which the archipelago relies for its main source of income – has been completely transformed.

But that very distinctiveness also, perhaps, explains why Canary Island wines have yet to make the leap into anything approaching the mainstream. We are very far from the everyday, high-volume, supermarket Spain here.

There is no Tempranillo or Albariño, let alone Malbec or Sauvignon Blanc. The best of Canary Island wine, red and white, always has a touch of something wild about it, a mix of surging acidity and earthy-smoky and mineral notes. They are made in small quantities from very low-yielding old vines, from grape varieties with little to no consumer recognition: Listán Blanco (aka Palomino), Vijariego Blanco, Marmajuelo, Gual (Bual) and Malvasía for whites; Negramoll, Baboso Negro (Trousseau, Bastardo), Vijariego Negro (Catalonia’s Sumoll) and Listán Negro for reds. They tend to be low in alcohol and, while often compulsively drinkable, they’re never obvious or showily concentrated.

That this remains somewhat niche as a wine region was certainly apparent as I was putting together this list of 18 of my favourite Canary Island wines: there are still not as many available to buy in the UK (or USA) as I would like.

Imports – and my list – are dominated by the largest island, Tenerife, which with its five very varied DOs is both the biggest and the most dynamic producer, with a preponderance of its leading vignerons.

Make no mistake, though: these are some of Spain’s – the world’s – most exciting, most arrestingly different, not to say finest wines.

Tasting notes and scores for 18 Canary Island wines to try

Related articles

• Expert’s choice: Savoie
• Expert’s choice: Madeira
• Expert’s choice: High street Spain