Envínate "Palo Blanco" La Orotava Tenerife Canary Islands 2024

Palo Blanco is Envínate's flagship white, and it's what Roberto refers to as a "vertical wine." Linear, sharply mineral, salty, tart green fruit with a fine citrus core and wonderfully textured palate. Notes of wet-stone, with a herbal-floral lift and a long, controlled finish. Stunning—chalky but with elegance. The roots from the centenary vines seem to have extracted all the minerality from the soils, and the wine is eminently stony and saline.

100% Listán Blanco from the Palo Blanco quarter in a village called Los Realejos in Valle de La Orotava, on the island's northern flank in Tenerife. The hand-harvested grapes were grown on ungrafted vines over 100 years old, trained in the traditional cordón trenzado method and planted in volcanic soils at 500-850 metres. Spontaneous fermentation in concrete with no temperature control or malolactic, then then most of the wine matured in foudre with the rest in used 350-liter barrels for 12 months. The year was quite homogeneous in the zone for the whites, they got very good yields and balanced wines. Bottled in July 2025.

Envínate (translates as "wine yourself") is the brainchild of four friends, winemakers Roberto Santana, Alfonso Torrente, Laura Ramos, and José Martínez. This gang of four formed back in 2005 while studying enology at the University of Miguel Hernandez in Alicante. Upon graduation, they formed a winemaking consultancy, which evolved into Envínate, a project that focuses on exploring distinctive parcels mainly in the Atlantic-inflected regions of Ribeira Sacra and the Canary Islands. Their collective aim is to make profoundly pure and authentic wines that express the terruño of each parcel in a clear and concise manner. To this end, no chemicals are used in any of the Envínate vineyards, all parcels are picked by hand, the grapes are foot-trodden, and the wines are fermented exclusively with wild yeasts, with a varying proportion of whole grape clusters included. For aging, the wines are raised in old barrels and concrete, and sulfur is only added at bottling, if needed. The results are some of the most exciting and honest wines being produced in Spain today.