Suertes del Marqués in pictures

db‘s Darren Smith was on the volcanic wine trail in Tenerife last week, visiting Suertes del Marqués in La Orotava, in the north of the Canary island. The family winery, managed by winemaker Jonatan Garcia Lima, has only been making wine since 2006 but has already built up a strong reputation for its distinctive volcanic wines from the region’s native Listan Negro and Listan Blanco grapes.

Producing wines from around 11ha of its own vineyards, plus using grapes from trusted growers – all within the Valle de la Orotava DO – Suertes del Marqués manages to express the volcanic terroir of the region with an emphasis unlike any other winery on the island.

Here Darren is helping Jonatan with the wetting of the cap of the recently fermented Listan Negro grapes from one of the winery’s single vineyard sites. This year Jonatan has been keen to experiment with whole bunch fermentation and maceration of his best Listan Negro grapes with the aim of producing wines of greater elegance and structure.

During the visit the cellar team was also busy packaging the latest vintage of the Suertes del Marqués ‘Trenzado’, a white wine made mainly from old vine Listan Blanco.

The vineyards of Suertes del Marques are distinctive for their use of trenzado vine training – a method unique to the Orotava Valley in which vines are plaited and extend as long as 10m from the trunk. What appear to be rows of vines in the picture above are actually single vines extending several metres up and down the hillside.

Some of the trenzado vines on the Suertes del Marques estate are thought to be up to 200 years old and are still yielding commercially viable quantities of fruit. These particular vines were under threat of being grubbed up before the Lima family stepped in to rescue them.

The trip to Suertes del Marqués also offered up the chance to visit Tenerife’s spectacular volcano, El Teide. At 3,718m, El Teide’s summit is the highest point in Spain.

From its base on the ocean floor, El Teide measures 7,500 m (24,600 ft), making it the third-highest volcano on a volcanic ocean island in the world after Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa in Hawaii.

From around 2,000m above sea level to the peak of El Teide, El Teide National Park presents a spectacular geological display, made up of millennia of volcanic activity and erosion, of lava flows, silicon sands, jagged mountain ridges, undulating hills of weathered pumice and more.

The variegated colour of the landscape is hugely impressive, from the mounds of ochre coloured weathered stone and the glittery black blocks of anthracite and obsidian to iron-red lakes of solidified lava and expanses of weathered pumice in yellows, reds, greys and greens. 

Apparently there are beehives up there. No idea why…

A little piece of pumice rock to take home as a souvenir.

Jonatan explains how cordon trenzado works. His 11 hectares of vineyards range from 300-750m above sea level, all of them with different orientations and soil composition. Grapes from the various sites are vinified separately. As well as Listan Negro and Blanco, Jonatan also grows old vine Vijariego Negro, Baboso Negro, Tintilla, Pedro Ximénez and Albillo Criollo.

Jonatan’s assistant winemaker, Loles Perez (formerly of Ribera del Duero estate Dominio de Pingus), caps magnums with wax.  

The perfectly acceptable sea view from the tasting room at Suertes del Marqués. With its lush greenery, humidity and cooler temperatures, the Orotava Valley presents a stark contrast to the semi-arid, sandy south of the island, which has attracted full English breakfast-loving sunseekers from the UK for decades.

Wines from the Suertes del Marqués range, including the entry-level ‘7 Fuentes’, ‘Trenzado’ white (mainly Listán Blanco, but also Pedro Ximenez, Albillo Criollo, Gual and Malvasia), the top-end white Vidonia (made with a hint of new oak), and single-vineyard reds La Solana, El Ciruelo, Candio and (new this year) El Chibirique.  

Many thanks to Jonatan for being the perfect host in La Orotava and for enabling Darren to mark another milestone on his volcanic wines odyssey.