La Cuesta 2025

Tierra Fundida, meaning "molten earth", is the family winery of Loreto Pancorbo and Gabriel Morales, based at their home above San Cristóbal de La Laguna in northern Tenerife. They farm seven hectares in Tacoronte and the Orotava Valley organically, with biodynamic practices, and make the wines entirely by hand. Wanderer belongs to Chica Reductiva, a line Loreto started in 2023. That harvest was a silent one: a large fire swept the island and the family suffered a loss, so for the first time there was no music in the winery. When it returned, the first song Loreto heard was Wanderer by Cat Power, and the wine took its name.

Hand-picked in October from the La Cuesta vineyard and gently whole bunch pressed. Half the juice fermented in old French oak barrels with wild yeasts and aged for five months without racking. The other half fermented in amphora with 20% of the skins for 20 to 25 days, then aged off the skins in amphora for five months. The two were blended and aged in concrete for one month before bottling, with partial, spontaneous malolactic fermentation. 1,100 bottles produced.

Lemon peel and zest with ripe stone fruit, gentle herbs and the struck-flint minerality volcanic soils give Canary whites. Skin contact in amphora adds subtle grip, old oak a creamy texture, and fresh acidity from 700 metres carries a long, saline finish. A rare, distinctive native white.

Roast chicken, grilled octopus or aged cheese.

The Orotava Valley runs down Tenerife's north coast beneath Mount Teide, and its high vineyards ripen slowly under the cool, moist influence of the trade winds. Its growers keep alive cordón trenzado, a braided-cordon training system found nowhere else, on young volcanic soils where the vines are ungrafted, as phylloxera never reached the Canaries. The wine is labelled under the archipelago-wide DO Islas Canarias, with Tenerife named on the label.