Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M Do you hear that sound. That's the sound of
waves splashing against the rugged volcanic rocks that make up
the Canary Islands. Situated along the northwestern coast of Africa.
(00:20):
The Spanish archipelago has been home to eruptions and remnant
ash that have given the islands a unique biosphere and microclimate.
Welcome back to point of origin. On today's episode, we're
talking Wine in the Canary Islands with wet Stone Magazine
(00:42):
contributor Monica Goya. Monica has a special connection to the
Canary Islands as her mother grew up on the island
of Tannerief. Yeah. So my mom grew up in on Tenerife,
(01:04):
and that's where half of my family still lives because
she's the only one who left. And so when I
was when I was growing up, I would go there
every summer and also sometimes other school holidays like Christmas.
And my mom has a very special relations with vineyards
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because when growing up, my granddad work, he had a job,
so my mom always talked with very with with you know,
love about the vineyards and and that life of tending
the land. And then when she moved to mainland Spain
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after she married, there were no vineyards here, so whenever
we went, she would be very excited to visit my
uncles bien yards and to see what he was doing.
And I feel that if my mom had been born
(02:11):
later on, maybe something that he might have pursued as
a profession. But of course there were no opportunities back then.
She grew up during the Franco dictatorship, so women were
not as free as we are today to do what
we please. I started to become interested in in wine somehow,
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in wine from there, because all my life I had
this my mom had been telling me about how the
things they did when they work in A massive volcano
erupted on my palmer, and the remnants of the ash
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parted in the soil gave the smaller Canary Island a
unique quality. The Canary Islands are seven main volcanic islands,
plus a few smaller ones, located in the Atlantic Ocean
off the coast of Morocco. They are a tropical holiday
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spot for many Northern Europeans, notorious Librets, Germans and Nordics
as well. Um The temperatures are mild year round, rarely
going above thirty degrees celsius, which is I think near
ninety fahrenheit in the summer or below seventeen in winter. However,
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it's a land of contrasts, not only because of the
changing landscape from arid plains to deep, narrow ballets, black
volcanic sandwiches, green forests, or jagged mountain, but also because
of the weather. There are dozens of microclimates within the
(04:06):
same island, and this is due to the rugged nature
of the islands and their greater elevations. For example, La Palma,
which is one of the smaller islands, so this last
volcano erupted in it was the last one um to
erupt in the archipelago. It's called the ten Idea volcano
(04:30):
and is located in the south of the island, so
it's not far from where Victoria has her winery and
some of her vineyards. La Palma that in terms of
soil is actually like two different islands because the north
is geologically much older than the south, so in the
North that the soil is dritts in organic matter you
(04:55):
can find clay, for example, whereas in the South, because
it is much younger, the soil is ritter in minerals,
but it's poorer in organic matter. Trade winds soften the
hardness of the nearby Sahara desert climate, so the weather
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and conclusion is very nice, with almost three thousand hours
of sunshine per year. And one of the most famous
crops from these islands are bananas um, which are grown
it seeks out of the Seven Islands, mostly in Tenerife
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and La Palma. And if you ask a person from
mainland Spain for a characteristic food from the islands, they
would very likely say platinus, which means bananas in Spanish.
But they are different to the ones imported from South
America that we get here in Europe. They are smaller
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and sweeter, and they have also black dots on their skin.
Let's talk about another important product of the Canary Islands. Wine.
Wine is actually very important there for the people who
(06:23):
lived there, but I don't know if it's as well
known outside the islands. Um. So the culture of wine,
I mean wine has been produced in the Canaries for
over five hundred years, and it's even mentioned in some
of Shakespeare's places, But until very recently it was not
(06:49):
something that maybe people were necessarily proud of um And
now I think that's changing because there is a new
generation of wine makers who who are doing amazing things
with the great varieties that are indigenous to the islands,
and they have vines that are over two hundred years
(07:12):
old in some cases. Um so I think, I mean,
it's a sweet moment because things are improving massively. One
of those new winemakers Monica refers to is Victoria Torres
Paces on the island of La Palma. Victoria tends to
(07:34):
vines that are over one hundred and thirty years old.
The Tortres Bodega is at Queen Calli In, which is
at the very southern tip of La Palma, on that
pure black volcanic ash. But the vine she cares for
can be found all over the island, all ungrafted and
(07:54):
consequently very old. So I met her when I and
I went to La Palma. I had had her wines before,
and last year when I visited La Palma, I contacted
her and I asked her if I could visit. And
I had read a bit about her and what she
(08:15):
was doing, and it fascinated me that she embarked. She
embarked herself on this mission too, to rescue old vineyards.
And when you are a woman, maybe it's harder so
many many of these wineries are still led by men
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and they take the decisions. So having a woman approaching
you when you are, you know, a man, maybe in
your seventies or eighties, and she tells you that she
wants to look after your vineyards if you can no
longer work, you need to be very brave to do
that in a place where as I said, this is
(08:58):
still there are women, of course, but it's very men dominated.
Is still. So she went to to complete her studies
in a different island, and when she went back in
two thousand and eight, she started working with her dad
and she learned the tricks of the trade from him.
(09:19):
Of course, as a child, I'm sure she spent a
lot of time in the vineyards because that's how you
grow up when you are there with a family that
works the land. Um And also is remarkable about Victoria
that she only had one day off when she was
working with her dad, and she used that one day
(09:41):
off to go and work with German couple who had
organic vineyards in the north of the island, and the
island is La Parma, is very abrupt, so there is
no motor way, and she used that one day off
instead of to rest to go and keep working even
(10:01):
more in different vinyards. So that's that shows a lot
of determination and how willing she was to learn as
much as you could. Victoria Torres is a fifth generation winemaker,
taking over from her father, one Mattias Torres in two
(10:23):
thousand fourteen, who she had been working closely underneath to
learn how to successfully operate the family business. This new
generation of winemakers started to do things differently. They are
not trying to compete with industrial wine from other parts
(10:46):
of the country that is cheap because they don't have
the means to do that. Tip wine. In other parts
the terrain is flat and it's easy to use machines
to produce the wine, whereas here, I mean on the islands,
because of the nature of the of the islands is
most of the work is done by hand. So unless
(11:09):
you do an artisan product, it's hard to sustain because
you can't ask people. You can't ask for I don't know,
twenty euros for a bottle of wine which is which
is not good quality. But you can't either make tip
wine there because because as I said, many of the
(11:30):
of the works in the vineyards have to be made
by hands. So these people started to appreciate that the
quality of the grapes, native grapes that they have in
the Canaries, and they started to to be proud of
this of these grapes that not many people knew. And
(11:54):
they started to work the vineyards using maybe like a
sort of um minimal intervention approach, if you like, so
that it would show the soil, it would show different
things that maybe not many people did in the previous years.
(12:15):
And Monica, I'm interested in the relationship between the return
to indigenous grape varieties and the sort of conservation mindset
as it relates to the soil um In other words,
do you think that there is a relationship between the
movement to conserve indigenous grape variety and a movement to,
(12:40):
let's say, conserve the health of the soil as we
see in natural wine. Do you think those are similarly aligned.
I think they go together, at least in the cases
of the of the winemakers I have met during these years.
They have a great interest in keeping traditional alive. They
(13:02):
are rescuing some vineyards that because the average of the
of the average eight of wine growers is very high.
It's over sixty years old, so some of them can
no longer work the land, and these people are appearing
and just trying to to preserve that tradition and that heritage.
(13:26):
And in some cases they have found vineyards that had
been abandoned basically, and they are trying to recover them.
So it's also a matter of patients, because maybe for
three or four years they are working in these vineyards
and not getting anything in return. In the fifteenth century,
the Canary Islands already had a well established wine industry
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and a moniker of sorts to go with it. Canary
sack sac is an antiquated wine term referring to white
fortified wine and possibly derivative of the Spanish saka, meaning
to draw out a method similar to the solary system
(14:10):
used in cherry production. The Islands are part of Spain
since the fifteenth century UM, and it was different. Portuguese
and Spanish were the main invaders, so some some of
(14:31):
them of the of the ways in which the grapes
are grown. They have different influences, and some people say
it was the Portuguese who brought grapes, it was the Spanish.
Is probably a mix of of the people who who
(14:51):
first lived there. After the conquest, so sometimes and the
century the French slash Portuguese. UM most likely planted vines
(15:12):
in the Canary Islands is that I guess it was
probably first in the sixteenth century, because the conquest ended
in fourteen nine Tennarifa was the last island to fall
Tenerifa La Palma. Actually the first ones were the most
(15:35):
eastern islands. And then also it is said that some
of the vines planted in America we're coming from the
Canary Islands because the islands became the first stop on
the way to the New World. UM. What makes her
(15:55):
wine most notable is the farming. And we've talked a
little bit about natural wine on the podcast about low
intervention in viticulture. So can you tell us about what
the different grape varieties are that she's growing, um, and
also what the characteristics of of the wines are. She
grows white and red grapes that probably the most famous
(16:20):
one in the in the wise is the Malbasa aromatica,
which means aromatic malbaca and is is like the start.
But she grows other wide varieties as well, like list
Toan Blanco Diego and Alvido Griolo and she has red
(16:45):
grapes like Negramle list and Negro or List tampriato. The
white grapes and use at the tours Bases domain are
both familiar from the Canary Islands as a whole and
also from southern Spain. These are at least Don Blanco
and Malvasia, and the main red variety is Negamon. There's
(17:07):
also least Don Brieto, perhaps better known as a variety
which has recently been revived in South America, where it
is called Pais in Chile or Grioa in Argentina. As
someone who has had some of these grapes but not
all of them, I think the Canary Island wines specifically
(17:30):
have a very beautiful but kind of subtle aromatic quality.
And I don't mean subtle um in terms of what
you can smell, but it's more like elegant. It's not
like a lot of heavy fruit um or it's not
like super funky. It's more like you know, c notes,
earth notes, mineral notes, metal notes, sailing are these Is
(17:56):
this just like in terms of the way that you
would describe um some of these grapes, because these are
this isn't like you know obviously chardonet or or lower
cabernet that many folks in the West are used to drinking. Um,
So can you speak like on the I don't know,
just like the feeling of drinking some of these different
(18:17):
wines or the taste, the impression that was left. I
completely agree with what you said. But for example, one
of of my favorite wines from Victoria is one called
Lass and this I was lucky enough to visit the
(18:38):
plot with her. It was the first one we visited
when I went. And it's a is a vineyard that
has been in her family for five generations, so she's
one that she loves. And I believe her dad made
white wines with all the wide grape varieties that they had,
(19:01):
but she started making a single vineyard white wine from
this Machukeras place and it's a hundred percent list on
blanco grape and half of the vines are over a
hundred years old. So I don't know. Maybe it's my imagination,
but I I think you can feel that persistent in
(19:23):
the in the wine, if that makes sense, and it's
it's elegant, and it has the minerality that volcanic wines
often have and it's fresh and it's complex at the
same time. So he said, you could have that wine
for a special occasion, but you could also have it
(19:43):
on a normal day. It's just, you know, a wine
that you can drink and and and it has that
because this is complex at the at the same time
that is fresh. I think it's a keen observation because
least On Blanco and least On Negro where my first
(20:07):
introductions into wines from the Canary Islands, and the least
On Blanco in particular. What you say about the ability
to enjoy it for a special occasion or on a
normal day is so very true. I hadn't quite. I mean,
I really love that about so many wines right like
that that feel that it could be dressed up, or
(20:29):
that feel really casual to our guests clothes or anything
for that matter. That's such a good quality, that kind
of utility. Is there anything else? Um that my sports
mentiondn't autromatic which is naturally sweet. Auromatic Malva uh is
(20:54):
a spectacular wine, but it's not for every day because
it's a sweet wine, so you are meant to have
it small doses. Um, And I tasted it last last
time I tasted it was during a wine fair in
London earlier this year, and Big Key was there. And
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it's difficult to put into words the amount of layers
of significance that the existence of this wine represents, because
you know the care, the patients, the tradition. So she
visits the vineyards for weeks waiting for the exact moment
(21:38):
when these Malvasia aromatica grapes are ready to be harvested.
Harvest that she does together with only one person, and
she only makes this wine in exceptional vintities, so it's
not a wine that she produces every year. And I
remember the honyed taste and even if it was a
(22:02):
sweet wine, it had a very surprising or balance between
switness and acidity. I'm not used to drink sweet wines,
but that's what surprised me. And it's a funny anecdote.
After this fair, I was outside talking to some other
wine professionals, and I mean they didn't know that I
(22:25):
had met Biggie before or anything like that. They were
talking about their favorite wines for the day after a
whole day tasting wines from Spain, and four out of
five had said that the wine that they were more
surprised than amazed. Why was this malvasia aromatica that she makes?
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And I thought, I really like that. Yeah, I think
it's so much harder to make an excellent sweet wine
as opposed to making excellent dry wine, because it's so
much harder to find that that balance. You know, well,
(23:11):
I I know that I'm ready to visit the Canary Island.
It's a place that I've always wanted to go. Victoria
Torres's wines are they widely available? Are they widely exported?
They are widely exported, so they are widely available elsewhere,
(23:31):
but not so widely available on the island. Do you
hate that? So? I wasn't very happy about that when
I was there, because I mean, also for her, because
it's nice that people where you live appreciate or have
(23:51):
access to what you're doing, especially when it's remarkably different
to others. To the wine is that other people are
making um there, But I mean, you can't find it,
but if you if you don't look for it, it's
hard to come across it on the island at whet Stone,
(24:18):
our love of wine has been exhaustively chronicled and continues
to be but in our reporting. For sure, one of
the most exciting trends we've seen on a global level
is precisely this aforementioned intertwining relationship between the preservation of
native grapes and natural wine production, which summons a hands
(24:43):
off viticultural and seller management technique without much consideration. Either
could be viewed as a trend catering towards a growing
consumer base of conscientious wine drinkers. But there is a
real story under lying this about a revolution that is
happening in the vineyards, a revolution that matches the native
(25:06):
grapes and its natural soil habitat that refuses the pesticides
or additions that serve at the whims of the winemaker
instead of let's say, the land or its traditions. If
we are to have a future in agriculture on this planet,
we would certainly benefit from more relationships between what grows
(25:29):
natively above the ground and what is well suited for
the vital life force below it. We'd like to thank
our guest today, Monica Goya and Victoria Tortrees Passes. You
can read Monica's full story and Whetstone Volume six, or
also on Instagram at Whetstone magazine. We'd also like to
(25:52):
thank our incredible podcast producer Selene Glazier. Selene, you are
the best. To our editor and Whetstone part partner and
director of Video David Alexander in London, appreciate you, Dave.
Thanks to our wet Stone production intern Quentin le Beau,
and last but not least, my business partner Mel she
(26:13):
who makes all things at Whetstone possible. Thank you Mel.
We'd also like to thank our partners in production at
I Heeart Radio to Gabrielle Collins, our supervising producer and
executive producer Christopher Haciotis. We'll be back next week with
more from the world of food worldwide Point of Origin listeners.
(26:40):
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(27:01):
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