Wanderer Blanco 2024

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.

Listán Blanco from cordón trenzado vines in the Los Topes vineyard, hand-picked in October. Gently whole bunch pressed and fermented with wild yeasts in concrete tank and old French oak, then aged in the same vessels for six months and bottled without fining or stabilisation. 900 bottles produced.

Green apple and quince with hints of white peach and the fennel and wild herb notes Listán Blanco picks up in Tenerife's north. A faint smoky, volcanic lift leads to a crisp, saline palate with a salty Atlantic tang. Concrete keeps it pure, old oak adds roundness, and the finish is clean and stony.

Grilled fish, papas arrugadas with mojo or fresh goat's 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.