Visiting Suertes del Marqués
Part 1 — History & Philosophy
I had this piece waiting in the wings. As many of you will know, a couple of months ago I was at the Island Wines Summit in Tenerife and, while I was on the island, I was lucky enough to visit Jonatan García, the driving force behind Suertes del Marqués, on two consecutive days.
Two days that could not have been more different. One with the skies as overcast as they could possibly be, with rain absolutely pouring down; the other under completely clear skies, making it abundantly clear why this island is a paradise. That alone should give you a pretty good idea of the complex microclimatic reality on the northern side of the island — battered by the trade winds and watered by frequent rainfall.
As you can imagine, two days give you plenty to talk about, so I’m going to turn this blog post into a two-part mini-series. This first part will focus on the region and Jonatan’s philosophy of working, both in the vineyard and in the winery. In the second, I’ll share my impressions of each of the cuvées I had the chance to taste.
We are in La Orotava, a valley that was formed following the collapse of the mountainside thousands of years ago. It is the area of Tenerife with the largest concentration of vineyards on the island. A historic region with a strong Portuguese influence, whose first settlers established themselves here to work in the sugar cane trade. When that market shifted to what is now Latin America, they began turning their attention to the wine trade.
Thus, the driving force behind this region, from the 16th century until the 19th, was viticulture. Back then, the region was producing no less than 14 million litres. That’s absolutely staggering when you consider that today, barely one million litres are produced across all the wineries working the 300 hectares of the D.O. An industry that operated very much along the lines of a négociant — but the history of viticulture in the archipelago is a story for another day.
Although we tend to associate the early days of the island with Malvasía, largely because of Canary Sack, it wasn’t until around 1540 that the variety really took off. Before that, the island’s leading grape variety was, believe it or not, Torrontés! After Malvasía declined on the island, dry wines began to be made in a style known as Vidonia or Vidueños, which is essentially a blend of different grape varieties, including Listán Blanco, which is now the dominant white grape variety in the region.
Today, almost all the vines are ungrafted. The island’s isolation meant that international varieties were rarely brought in, while also keeping phylloxera at bay, preserving the braided-cordon training system so typical and distinctive of the landscape in La Orotava. Yes, I know traces of phylloxera were found last year, but we’ll leave that for another post.
The thing is, we’re here visiting Jonatan, who is the largest grower in the area, with 12 hectares of vineyards. Nine of those are his own, because for Jonie, it’s not only important to be a producer, but a grower. He leases the remaining three hectares from local growers who are now retiring from the trade — and that’s where labels such as Trenzado and 7 Fuentes come from.
As you can see from the photographs, the vineyards are planted at elevations ranging from 400 to 800 metres above sea level, on slopes with gradients of around 35%, on the northern side of the island, facing the Atlantic Ocean head-on.
The western part of the region tends to have a higher proportion of Listán Blanco, as the soils are poorer and contain more basalt. In the centre and towards the east, Listán Negro is more prevalent, owing to the greater proportion of clay in the soils.
All of this land once belonged to the island’s wealthiest families. That changed during the 1960s and 1970s when the arrival of tourism brought new opportunities, allowing many people to earn enough money to purchase land of their own. That was the case for Jonatan’s father, who worked as a carpenter. He began making wine on a small scale to drink with friends, while also selling grapes to other wineries. The estate itself was founded in 2006, when Jonatan decided to start producing his own wines.
As I mentioned earlier, the traditional training system here is the cordón trenzado. It is thought to have developed as an adaptation to the nature of Malvasía, a variety that does not produce fruit from its first bud and therefore requires long pruning. Each vine develops two long braided canes that follow the contours of the steep hillside, generally running north to south, with a single vine sometimes reaching an astonishing 30 or even 40 metres in length.
And so this system was born — or so the theory goes. It also offered a practical advantage, allowing growers to cultivate other crops, such as potatoes or pumpkins, during the vine’s dormant months, as the canes could be moved aside once the harvest had been completed.
That detail led me to ask whether the vineyards are still managed today with any form of cover cropping, even if not with the crops mentioned above. More than being concerned with the use of cover crops themselves, what truly interests him is restoring the soil’s pH by adding calcium, improving the plants’ ability to assimilate nitrogen and, in turn, avoiding reductive profiles in his wines — as I explained in greater detail in the following article I published almost two months ago:
Upon entering the winery, the first thing that catches your eye is Jonatan’s preference for working with large-format oak vessels. There are casks of 2,000 and 2,500 litres, while the smallest are 500 litres in capacity — the minimum size he considers compatible with the way he likes to work.
He adds nothing to his wines, apart from a tiny touch of sulphur. He considers the levels he uses to protect his wines to sit somewhere in the middle ground, with reds typically bottled at around 55 mg/L of total sulphur dioxide and whites between 60 and 75 mg/L.
“If you want wines to age and to travel well, you need SO₂. There’s no way around it. It’s the only thing that can stop the process that eventually turns wine into vinegar”.
Each year, provided the vintage allows it, he carries out around 60 separate vinifications. In other words, every plot is vinified individually, as it helps him understand the region’s potential in a far more effective way. Thanks to that enormous amount of work, he now has an intimate understanding of the potential of both the growers he works with and his own vineyards.
He likes to harvest relatively early because he prefers not to acidify his wines, opting instead to preserve naturally high levels of acidity. Moreover, should malolactic fermentation decide to kick in, the wines will still retain plenty of freshness. More often than not, however, he prefers to prevent it altogether through the use of sulphur.
He crafts 18 labels in total, of which I had the opportunity to taste 16 of them. His philosophy is remarkably clear and is reflected throughout the range, from the village wines — where he also works with négociant fruit — to the collection of single-vineyard bottlings that forms the true heart of the estate.
The wines I tasted were the following:
- Trenzado 2021
- Trenzado 2024
- Vidonia 2017
- Vidonia 2018
- Vidonia 2024
- Vidonia V.P. 2021
- Vidonia V.P. 2024
- Edición 3, Listán Blanco, 2024
- Rosado, 2024
- La Floridita, 2024
- Malvasía Rosada, 2021
- 7 Fuentes, 2021
- La Solana, 2022
- La Solana, 2023
- Candio, 2021
- El Esquilón, 2021
- El Chibirique, 2022
- Edición 3, Listán Negro, 2024
- Las Suertes, 2022
- Vidueño, 2022
- Cruz Santa, 2022
- El Ciruelo, 2017
Tasting notes already available:
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