On Sale
Atlante Blanco, Valle de la Orotava, Spain 2020
Jesús Gonzalez comes from a long line of winegrowers and agriculturalists in Tenerife, the largest of Spain’s Canary Islands, and for years his family sold grapes and made bulk wines from their handful of hectares here. Feeling that the fruit from these ancient ungrafted vines deserved a better fate, Jesús founded Atlante in 2013, setting out to produce wines of minimal intervention and maximal expressiveness—wines which reveal the true uniqueness and power of his homeland’s terroir.. Unearth Spain's hidden wine gem.
Atlante’s white wine comes from a parcel called Los Topes in the western part of the Valle de la Orotava at 600 meters altitude. Here, Listán Blanco and Albillo Criollo are planted in roughly equal proportions in soils of volcanic sand mixed with small amounts of clay and basalt. The vineyard’s relatively cool and cloudy microclimate results in a long vegetative cycle, with harvest taking place typically in mid-October, and wines from this plot subsequently show phenomenal acidity and drive. The two varieties are co-fermented without added yeasts and without temperature control, and the wine spends 12 months on its fine lees in used 600-liter French-oak barrels before bottling. Offering a tension-packed combination of salty acidity and citrus-tinged viscosity, this exuberant wine gives fennel, quince, and fresh mountain herbs, with a long and tunneling finish which promises some years of positive evolution.