Suertes del Marqués Trenzado Valle De La Orotova 2021

95% listan blanco & 5% others. Native fermentation in oak & aged 10 months. Notes of citrus, green apples & smoke.

The Canary Islands, located off the coast of Morocco, but technically a part of Spain, form a backdrop for some of the most unlikely yet wondrous vineyards for producing fine wines in the entire world.

Visiting the vineyards of Suertes del Marques is like going back in time.  The area is Phylloxera free and so the vines are pie franco (own-rooted) and extremely old, with some potentially over 200 years! The varietal mix here is like a treasury of lost and little know grapes: Listan Negro and Blanco, Malvasia Rosado, Vijariego, Baboso Negro, and more, about 80% red and 20% white.

Given the extremely special nature of what Suertes del Marques possesses, proprietor Jonatan Garcia Lima works all his vineyards organically and all by hand and with the utmost care and respect for nature and history. From these amazing and unique vineyards, he endeavors to make fresh, tensile, and mineral-driven wines that showcase the volcanic soils and the native varieties.  To achieve his objective, through years of experimentation and refinement, he has divided up the slope into parcels to achieve a hierarchy (much like a slope in Burgundy) as well as a unique vineyard signature for each of his top Cru wines.  These various parcels have names like El Ciruelo, El Chibirique, El Esquilon and La Solana. The parcel wines are also grouped by soil type, with gold capsules indicating more "sandy" soils and silver capsules more clay over the bedrock of volcanic subsoils. 

To achieve the utmost purity and refinement in the wines, all work in the cellar is done with a minimum of interference. This includes all indigenous yeast fermentations, the use of neutral large oak barrels with minimal racking, and added sulfur during the élévage. He also is a believer in using a decent percentage of whole clusters in fermentation for these native varietals, having been inspired by tasting and visiting areas like Burgundy and the Rhone Valley. At bottling, there is also a minimum of filtration with the wines just passing through a large screen to remove any unwanted remnants, stems, grape skins, etc.