Juan Jesús Méndez spent his whole life hunting down forgotten grapes in the Canary Islands. Now his son Jorge is doing something a little different. He's looking for the places those grapes came from. Like Lomo de la Era, this steep plot on the western side of La Orotava Valley where the volcanic rock basically busts right through the soil.
Five hundred thousand years ago, a massive landslide carved this whole valley after the huge Cañadas volcano collapsed because of the brutal seismic activity. The vines sit at 500 metres on the stony western shoulder of the valley, and are trained in this old cultivation method called cordon trenzado. The vines look like braids, like five-metre-long serpents crawling down the volcanic slopes, drinking in that salty Atlantic air.
In the cellar, Jorge starts off with pre-fermentative oxidation, and the juice goes through spontaneous fermentation, and ages for nine months in amphora with no racking.
The wine is extremely textured and salty. It tastes like astringent quince and fresh honeycomb, with this little spark of flint and gunpowder that makes you go, huh. The nose is reminiscent of thick tahini paste, spiced honey and a little vegetal fling, like raw white fennel bulb.
Drink it on a fourth date. The one where you're both trying to play it cool but you already know.
