My latest piece for Pellicle: Con Altura

Photo by Andy Cannon

I’ve been off my blogging game recently because I’ve been working deep on my latest Pellicle article about Tenerife wine culture.

Here’s a little snippet:

Juan Felipe García—call him Felipe—is the owner of Bodega Finca Marañuela, one of a growing number of tiny wineries that cultivate indigenous Canarian grapes by strictly sustainable methods. He makes wine with his sisters at their family farm on the slopes of Mount Teide, at the edge of La Orotava, Tenerife’s vineyard heartland.

Part town, part botanical garden, La Orotava is an uncannily beautiful place. The tropical greenery is lush, casting cooling shadows across the tiled pavements. Even the abandoned scrubland and overgrown building sites are alive with wildflowers, bees, and butterflies.

In amongst the visitor centres, terrace bars, and boutiques, there are signs that La Orotava has its own vibey subculture. Graffiti murals have made their way up from Puerto de la Cruz, and shops like Slow Coffee, co-owned by Argentinian native Natalia Cambiaggio, serve coffee sourced from independent roasters.

The cafe’s laid-back manner suits its clientele of local skaters, surfers, hipster tourists, and world champion cyclists who have come to the mountain for altitude training. (At one point, Wout Van Aert flies past our car in full tuck—a complete coincidence, you understand.)

This sense of bounteous vibrancy is, of course, a legacy of tourism. Before aeroplanes full of visitors with foreign money began landing en masse, La Orotava, like many areas of Tenerife, was ravaged by centuries of unstable Spanish rule and two world wars.

This story is about the amazing natural wines I drank on the island, but it’s also about the land itself, and what Felipe and his peers feel about the over-tourism and exploitation of Tenerife’s land and communities. I hope you enjoy it!