Wine in Tenerife

Wines are part of the landscape in Tenerife, and it is a leading sector of the island’s agriculture. Vines from Canary Islands reached the height of their splendor in the XVII and XVIII centuries. At the time, famous writers like Gongora, Scott, Kuprin, Shakespeare, Goldoni and Spillman made mention of their admiration for the excellent Canary Island wines in their work.

Nowadays the importance and quality of the Canarian wines is guaranteed by the large number of awards, both national and international. Due to the great variety of nacionalities which settled the island after the conquest, a large number of vineyards were introduced. This fact and the rivalry among these settlers gave rise to a unsurpassable richness of vineyards.

On Tenerife you should visit the Casa del Vino Baranda, an XVII century mansion in which the authorities have created a valuable museum of the wine-producing tradition of the island.

Wines from Tenerife are the best in the Canaries. The wines are often a mixture of two or three different grape varieties.

The Tenerife Wine Society

October meeting

The Tenerife Wine Society, held its October meeting in the restaurant L’Orangerie at Playa Paraiso on Thursday the 7th.

Our welcoming wine was a delicious white from Penedes Marques de Monistrol, Blanc de Blancs.

To get to the serious business we started with (my favourite of the evening) Fontespina Crianza ’99 from Ribera del Duero, a wonderfully rounded, solid, bountiful red wine. To think that my first tasting of a ‘Ribero’ was not good and this put me off buying their wines for ages, in my humble opinion the wines from this denomination pound for pound are better value than present day Riojas.

Back to the object of this little article this lovely wine was followed by two wines from Somontano they were Vinas del Vero 2002 and Enate2002 both perfectly acceptable but personally I prefer my reds to be a little older. The Torre de Guadianeja reserve 99 from La Mancha which came next was not as good as it should have been but possibly I was served from a bottle that was faulty. The last wine for our official tasting was the only Rioja of the evening, Torre Aldea Reserva 98, a good respectable wine that anyone would be hard pushed to fault, but not exciting .

Dinner consisted of Feuillette de Fruits de Mer au Poivre de Lechuan (absolutely superb) as is often the case with Pascal (the chef) I could have eaten two or three starters and been in heaven. However we followed with the main course of Supreme de poularde Braise aux Herbe Fraiches, this was accompanied by a French wine, no doubt a choice of the chef, Domaine Petite Bouigard from Cotes du Rhone. For my dessert of Croustillant de Mousse au Chocolat I was ably assisted by my lady partner as she informed me that I wouldn’t like it and promptly cleared my plate!

Once again an excellent evening thanks to Gerry and Vivienne and of course to Pascal the chef who we’re told is leaving to set up elsewhere. Please let us know where Pascal. A little bird also says that Damien who ran this restaurant before Pascal is returning.

Don’t forget the wine society’s dinner/dance and awards weekend in Puerto de la Cruz 1st November, see you there.

September meeting