Canary Wine

My lovely best friend has just returned from what looked like an amazing holiday, judging from the photos. She went to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands which, most of you may know, is volcanic with an amazing landscape. Although I'm fairly well-travelled I have never been to the Canaries at all so imagine how pleased I was when she came to see me last week clutching a bottle of the local red. She knows me too well! 
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We tasted this while my friend showed me photos of the vineyard. What a facsinating place! These are 'lava fields' which are made up from gravel like lava rock. They are so exposed and windy that the amazing old vines are protected by little personal walls. These are vines which have know no disease and look to be supremely well cared for. 

The wine that was grown here is from the Listan grape. Again another first for me having never drunk wine from the region or this grape. Excitement! 

On pouring this wine is extremely light in colour .The nose is extremely distinctive and I'd not really smelled anything like it before. There is a massive red fruit hit on first sniff, raspberry and cherry but there are also some smells like leather and tobacco and a sort of musty note. I'm pretty sure that this must be the fascinating soil it's grown in adding its fabulous USP. The taste is red fruit heavy, as you might expect after the sniff and there's a real hint of strawberry at the fore. The body is lovely and light - I think you could stand to chill this, not that we did. We were enjoying it far too much for that. The real winner for this wine is the mineral/stony flavour which almost presents itself as a slight fizz on the tongue. 

I literally found every sip of this wine interesting. If you're going on holiday to Lanzarote anytime soon I would heartily recommend sampling a bit of this very individual little number! 
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(with thanks to my friend for the lovely photo!)