The regional winery of Tacoronte finds its origin in the Insular Winegrowing Plan that the Council of Tenerife drafted in 1987. The idea was to build and supply the island’s winemakers with a number of county wineries equipped with technology for quality elaborations. Once it was built, the insular corporation leased these wineries to the society Bodegas Insulares Tenerife (BITSA), which has been producing wines from 1992. The aim was to stop the bulk distribution of artisanal wines from Tenerife and raise the quality so it could compete with the best Spanish wines. Tradition, history, and raw material were plentiful.

The aim was to stop the bulk distribution of artisanal wines from Tenerife and raise the quality so it could compete with the best Spanish wines

A great oenologist, Felipe Blanco, led the project and the winery and within a short period of time he did indeed achieve to locate the label Viña Norte, amongst the best from Spain and even in the world. The other side of the project was to also create benefits for the society and the scenery, given that it supported the many independent winegrowers and avoided the abandonment of the croplands.

Since then, the range of wines has been increasing year after year. And if its first achievements and successes both locally and internationally were based on their reds with carbonic maceration, barrels, and aging (also one of the first wineries in the Canaries to manufacture this way), the continuous effort to research and provide new elaborations has led to even more recognition. That is what happened with a range of sweet wines under a new label: Humboldt. The first one was a Listán Negro from the 1997 harvest, aged 9 months in American oak barrels before its commercialization in 1999 (200th anniversary of German naturalist and geographer Alexander von Humboldt’s stay in Tenerife).

“This wine has been located at the top while opening a path for Listán Negro,” says its creator Felipe Blanco, the winery’s general manger at the time. Two other sweet jewels were to follow: a white Listán aged four years in the barrel and a Malvasia aged six months in the barrel.

Another successful initiative of the winery was to make orujo schnapps (pomace brandy). The first distillation took place in 2002, in a distillery in an annex building, from selected grapes that had been soft pressed to get (apart from a higher quality) the skins (marc) to distill them with steam in an alembic. The resulting liquor is sold under the label Fayal and has also had offspring in the form of orujo de hierbas, orujo with chestnut honey, and a brandy aged in oak.

The current oenologist, Francisco Calixto, maintains the line initiated by Blanco, with whom he worked basically from the start, regarding the high standards after 1992 as well as the renewal of the product range with new elaborations. For example, they have recently made a “Malvasia, which we always used to make as a liquor wine and now we changed it to a dry white; and a red, full-bodied, well-structured Negramoll without aging, to see what a Negramoll really tastes like,” explains Calixto. That was the criteria.

■ Bodegas Insulares Tenerife SA Bodega Comarcal de Tacoronte Vereda el Medio 48, 38350 Tacoronte (Tenerife), Islas Canarias (España) Phone number: (34) 922 570 617 Email: comercial@bodegasinsularestenerife.es Home page: www.bodegasinsularestenerife.es ● Capacity: 1,800,000 liters. ● Average production: 500,000 bottles/year. ● Export: Spanish Peninsula, Germany, and Czech Republic. ♠ Visits by appointment (from 8am to 4pm from Monday to Friday, minimum 3€/person). ♣ There is a shop and a tasting lounge.