FINCA MARAÑUELA

I spent 21 years inside the mass tourism industry. Hotels, tour operators, revenue management, the machinery of moving people at scale. Then came a double thrombosis, then a pandemic. I had the chance to carry on. I chose not to. I came back to the family land in La Perdoma, in the Valle de La Orotava on the north side of Tenerife.

My father had been working this finca his whole life. That summer, at nearly 80, he said he couldn't do the harvest anymore. So I did it.

There was no plan. No business model. Just vines that my great-grandfather had planted, still ungrafted, still producing after more than a century. The soil here is volcanic Andisol, fed by trade winds and Atlantic dew. The vines grow in Cordón Trenzado, a centuries-old hand-braided trellis system now declared Intangible Cultural Heritage by the Government of the Canary Islands. You braid each shoot by hand, every year. It takes time. That's the point.

Finca Marañuela is not just a winery. It is a working agricultural estate: Listán Negro and Listán Blanco vines alongside arabica coffee, banana, papaya, tobacco and sunflowers. Everything grew together, as it always was. The wines are organic, natural, and minimally interventionist, with no corrections in the cellar. Between 500 and 1,600 bottles a year. No more.

I do every guided visit myself. The person who tends the vines is the same person who opens the cellar door. When you visit, you walk the same ground, talk to the same person who made the wine, and leave knowing exactly where it came from.

Finca Marañuela is a Slow Food Farm and the first winery in the Canary Islands to join the AEVR, the Spanish Regenerative Viticulture Association. In 2024, the Ayuntamiento de La Orotava recognized the estate as a Cittaslow Supporter.

Slow Wines for a Fast World.

Two varieties. That's it.

Listán Negro and Listán Blanco are both grown on the same volcanic soil in La Perdoma, Valle de La Orotava, at around 400 metres above sea level on the north side of Tenerife. The vines were planted by my great-grandfather. They have never been grafted. They are still producing.

Canary Islands viticulture largely escaped phylloxera, the 19th-century louse that devastated European vineyards and forced growers to graft their vines onto American rootstock. Here, many vines grow on their own roots, as they always have. These are among them.

The vineyard is trained in Cordón Trenzado, a braided trellis system in which each vine shoot is woven by hand into long cords that can reach ten metres or more. It is slow work. It was also recently declared Intangible Cultural Heritage by the Government of the Canary Islands. The vines share the land with arabica coffee, banana, papaya, tobacco and sunflowers — polyculture, not monoculture, as it has always been on this finca.

From these two varieties, I make four different wines: two reds, a rosé and an orange, all organic, natural and minimum intervention, and with minimal intervention in the cellar. No added yeasts, no fining, no filtration. What happens in the vineyard is what ends up in the bottle. Between 500 and 1,600 bottles a year, depending on the harvest.

The wines are sold directly, sometimes without a designation of origin. They need time in a bottle. They are not made for immediate gratification.

Slow Wines for a Fast World.