Atlante, Listán Negro, Valle de la Orotava, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain 2019

Atlante’s pure Listán Negro bottling comes from a vineyard known as La Quinta, situated at 400 meters altitude in the Valle de la Orotava; this is the family’s longest-held parcel, and the winery sits right in the middle of it.

Jesús González's vines here are over 150 years old — ungrafted, of course, and trained in the traditional braid-like Cordon Trenzado method. At harvest, bunches are brought promptly into the lagar (around which the vines are planted), where a portion are left whole-cluster and trod by foot in traditional horizontally oriented shallow cement vessels. Fermentation proceeds spontaneously, lasting for eight to ten days — a relatively quick fermentation facilitated by the large surface area of the horizontal vats. After being pressed in a small vertical wooden basket press, the wine ages 12 months in used 600-liter French-oak barrels.

Atlante’s Listán Negro showcases its relatively cool microclimate of origin, with a fresh, lifted palate saturated with red fruits, cracked black pepper, and a cupboard’s worth of spices. There is a density of material and a juiciness here which speak to the Canaries’ plenitude of warmth, but the wine remains unabashedly brisk and scintillating.