Icod de los Vinos is named for its wine, and the slopes above the apartment have been producing it since the sixteenth century. What most visitors do not realise is that Tenerife’s wine is genuinely unusual — not just local colour, but one of a small number of places in the world where the vines are what they were before the nineteenth century.
Why the vines are different
In the 1860s the phylloxera louse arrived in Europe from North America and destroyed almost every vineyard on the continent. The eventual fix was to graft European vines onto resistant American rootstock, which is what nearly all wine in the world now grows on.
Phylloxera never established itself in the Canaries. So a great many vines here still grow on their own roots, some of them very old, in volcanic soil, at altitudes that would be impossible for grapes at this latitude anywhere else.
Add grape varieties that survived nowhere else — Marmajuelo, Vijariego, Baboso alongside the more common Listán Blanco and Listán Negro — and you have wines that genuinely do not taste like anything on the mainland.
Where to go, nearest first
Viñátigo, La Guancha — about fifteen minutes east. Runs winery tours, and is the name most associated with reviving the island’s old varieties.
Viña Zanata, also La Guancha — a shop and bodega. This is the white our hosts tell you to ask for by name at Silogía and El Rebojo in Garachico.
Casa del Vino, El Sauzal — about forty minutes east, and the serious one: a restored estate with exhibitions on the island’s wine history, tastings, a shop and a well-regarded restaurant. Book the restaurant ahead. It pairs naturally with Casa Nila nearby.
Buying it to take home
Most Tenerife wine never leaves the island, and the good bottles are not in the supermarkets. The bodegas and the weekend farmers’ markets are where to buy.
Check ahead before driving to a winery — tours usually need arranging, and the general rule about opening hours applies here too.