Atlante Tinto, Valle de la Orotava, Spain 2019

Atlante’s pure Listán Negro bottling comes from a vineyard known as La Quinta, situated at 400 meters altitude in the Valle de la Orotava; this is the family’s longest-held parcel, and the winery sits right in the middle of it. Jesús’ vines here are over 150 years old—ungrafted, of course, and trained in the traditional braid-like Cordon Trenzado method. At harvest, bunches are brought promptly into the lagar (around which the vines are planted), where a portion are left whole-cluster and trod by foot in traditional horizontally oriented shallow cement vessels. Fermentation proceeds spontaneously, lasting for eight to ten days—a relatively quick fermentation facilitated by the large surface area of the horizontal vats—and after being pressed in a small vertical wooden basket press, the wine ages 12 months in used 600-liter French-oak barrels. Atlante’s Listán Negro showcases its relatively cool microclimate of origin, with a fresh, lifted palate saturated with red fruits, cracked black pepper, and a cupboard’s worth of spices. There is a density of material and a juiciness here which speak to the Canaries’ plenitude of warmth, but the wine remains unabashedly brisk and scintillating.