![]() ![]() At the time, Canarian winemakers favored the Malvasia grape, which was made into a sweet, syrupy wine very popular with foreign explorers and good for transport. ![]() Like the island of Madeira, the Canary Islands were often a port for explorers sailing the world in the 1400s. Because of the region’s isolation from the mainland, phylloxera never arrived in the Canary Islands, meaning that vines can quite literally be hundreds of years old – with hundreds of years of complexity.ĭespite the hot climate, white grapes make up the majority of the Canary Islands’ wine production, both due to history and terroir. One of the assets that Canarian winemakers have is something that very few other regions can claim: extremely old vines. With such a recent modern wine emergence, the wines are only going to get better from here – and you’ll already be an expert. So what’s the deal with these extreme island wines? Here’s the 101 on the grapes, the wine styles, and the islands themselves. But they do create one of the most exciting wine regions to emerge on an international stage in the past 10 years. Combined with rugged terrain, the potential for volcanic activity, and extreme winds, these conditions don’t exactly add up to the most ideal winemaking environment. Located at a latitude of about 28 degrees, it seems improbable that the hot and humid Canary Islands could possibly produce quality wines the vast majority of quality winemaking regions, after all, lie between 30 and 50 degrees latitude. It’s here that the volcanic archipelago of the Canary Islands, or Las Canarias, sprung up over the course of several million years and became home to some of Europe’s oldest vines. To get to the most extreme winemaking region in Spain, you’ll have to travel a bit farther south than the country’s mainland – just off the coast of southern Morocco, to be exact. ![]()
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