The Vignerons of Lanzarote
If you ever needed proof of mankind’s love of wine, look no further than the winemakers and vignerons of Lanzarote. From this windswept, arid island which in places closely resembles a wild and unexplored planet Captain Kirk might beam down to rather than a much loved holiday destination, we were lucky enough to taste a red and white wine from the cooperative SoCo Vinicola.
Lanzarote Volcanic Vineyards
The Solco Blanc had a delicate nose, aromas of musky jasmine and fennel leading to a refreshing palate with lemon peel, a slight hint of grapefruit with medium acidity giving the wine a good structure. Slightly spicy on the finish with white pepper and lingering lemon zest.
We tasted the wines with some newly delivered French cheeses (sorry, we couldn’t help ourselves). It paired especially well with the Castillion Frais, an unpasteurised sheep’s cheese from Provence. Fresh, lemony with a fantastic moosey mouthfeel, it enhanced the citrus in the wine, such amazing flavours working together made the hair stand up on my arms.
Castilon Frais, Tom and Beaufort
Back to the wine and some facts about the growing conditions in Lanzarote, hostile to say the least; located nearer to the Western Sahara than Spain and on average only receiving 150mm of rainfall per year (the comparatively sodden UK receives 1150 mm) combined with the drying strong desert winds and soil of volcanic ash, it is a wonder that anything is able to survive here. Yet out of the ashes of the last major volcanic explosions, where a third of the island was covered in lava and the ‘traditional’ vineyards destroyed, came innovation and the creation of new vineyard techniques that enabled vines to flourish, techniques that are still used today almost 300 years later.
Viewed from the sky, the vineyards look like gigantic scales on a monstrous fish (another reason why Captain Kirk might be intrigued). Deep craters are dug into the black volcanic soil, with one vine planted in each. The crater traps the morning dew with the granules of volcanic rock preventing evaporation and acting as a slow-release sponge for the roots. A stone wall in a shape of a half-moon is built around each crater to protect the vine from the desert winds. Everything, including harvest, is carried out by hand, the vines take an incredible amount of work to maintain throughout the year.
The moonscape looking vineyards of Lanzarote
SoCo Tinto is a pure expression of Lanzarote’s terroir. As elegant as the Blanc and really well integrated despite its 2020 vintage, sulphur on the nose with very subtle undertones of dried cherries and red currants. You can taste the volcano, which sounds unpleasant but trust me, isn’t. Layered flavours of pumice stone, sour cherries and herbs in the mouth with linear tannins and acid to give structure - all beautifully harmonised. All of us kept on smelling and tasting, nosing and swirling, going back, and back again searching for further hidden flavours and aromas. I cannot wait to taste this with some octopus or steak cooked on Sam’s Konro grill in the restaurant.
It makes me wince that these wines may not have come to be, the cooperative SoCo Vinícola was created in haste in 2020 after the island’s winegrowers struggled to find wineries that were able to take on their grapes during the pandemic. A collective of growers behind another Lanzarote wine project, Puro Rofe, decided that they would take a chance and collected all the grapes they were able to fit into their winery, some 40,000 kilos.
The consensus from the tasting was that both of these wines are to be admired, not just that something so enjoyable can be grown in a landscape so harsh but also the hard work and doggedness undertaken to create them - the epitome of making lemonade when life gives you lemons, or should that be wine?