Gran Canarian winegrowers have been able to adapt the vine to the island’s environment through specific cultural practices. This in small plots of vines which form their own landscape within the landscape, along with the environmental conditions imposed on each slope, each valley and each hillside. A fragmented and hidden vineyard landscape which we must discover and which expresses itself with such a diversity of colours and organisation that constitutes the main characteristic of the wine-growing landscape in Gran Canaria. This diversity also translates into an extraordinary varietal and oenological diversity.
The relationship between the land and the vineyard through the work of the vinedresser has generated, due to its orographic complexity, a great diversity of landscapes: vineyards in pits, on terraces, on steep slopes, etc. The industriousness of the islanders has generated a sustainable soil, supporting it with the closest geological materials, and organising a space, which today is shown to us as anthropic landscapes of extraordinary beauty and of immense scenic and ethnographic value.
We must bear in mind that the vineyard had an industrial and exporting character in the 16th century, but this international value was lost for different reasons, and since then, the vine has been a crop for domestic consumption and, in most cases, complementary to other agricultural activities, which is why its surface area has been reduced.
It was at the end of the 20th century that some land began to be devoted exclusively to vines, taking advantage of the great family tradition existing on most of the islands. It was also due to a certain demand generated by tourism and thanks to the interest of some winegrowers who have taken the step from family winemaking to a more professional one. It is in these new crops where there is a greater concern for aspects such as: soil type, orientation, altitude, varieties to be planted and planting densities.
Even so, most of the island’s crops consist of polycultures in which the vine shares space with other plantations, in an original and curious way which, together with their locations in scenery of great beauty and tourist vocation, generate landscapes of great unique interest.
Vine cultivation in Gran Canaria is fragmented, generating a discontinuous vineyard landscape, in contrast to the large extensions of vineyard landscapes typical of continental environments, which has an abundance of vineyard agrosystems as a result of the work of adaptation of the growers to a difficult environment. Effort and ingenuity have given rise to natural landscapes of great value.
The abrupt and sometimes hostile orography on which the vineyards are often located has meant that there is little mechanisation of the work, with 28% of the surface area dedicated to vine cultivation settled on slopes of over 30% (16°), a threshold above which viticulture is considered a heroic practice.
This heroism is also reflected in its survival in the face of the succession of agricultural economic cycles, the change from the agrarian to the urban/tourist economic model and the urban pressure of the rural environment.
As part of the natural development that landscapes undergo, they vary and evolve to ensure their survival. Thus, and as a result of the need to find solutions to the orographic complications described above and to improve production, trellis plantation systems have been incorporated to coexist with traditional systems. As a result, it is common to find on the same vineyard the traditional cultivation systems: creeping goblet, high goblet and high pergola vine arbour or latada for the oldest vines, combined with the new trellis training systems, which allow greater mechanisation of cultivation and in turn a saving in time and manpower.
The geographical location, climatic diversity and important wine-growing tradition make the Canary Islands a region with a very important wine-growing heritage. It is one of only four regions in the world free of phylloxera, the horrible plague that devastated a large part of the world’s vineyards at the end of the 19th century. This is the reason that this archipelago preserves the practice of free-standing planting, i.e. the shoots are planted directly in the ground, without being grafted onto an American rootstock, which allows the plant to fully interact with the soil and explains, in turn, the typical minerality of the wines of our terroir.
This pre-phylloxera viticultural practice has contributed to maintaining varieties of vines that are now extinct or have undergone sufficient molecular modifications so that these original vines have evolved to adapt to the conditions of the territory and form part of the important varietal diversity of the Canary Islands.
The red variety that is most used by Gran Canarian winemakers is Listán negro, the most widely used throughout the region, followed by Tintilla, Vijariego negro, Negramoll and Castellana. Among the white varieties, Moscatel de Alejandría is the most popular, followed by Vijariego blanca, Pedro Jiménez, Listán blanco, Malvasía, Gual, Albillo, Marmajuelo and Forastera blanca.
The territorial scope of the Gran Canaria Wine Route coincides with the area of protection and production of the Denomination of Origin of Gran Canaria Wines which, as stipulated in its Regulations and in the Specifications, covers the entire surface area of the island of Gran Canaria.
According to the expression attributed to the humanist Domingo Doreste “Fray Lesco” at the beginning of the last century, Gran Canaria is a “miniature continent”; an expression that has its basis in the climatological, morphological and ecological complexity of the island, where the landscapes has been built according to the physical environment.
In the middle of the Canary Islands, an archipelago of volcanic origin located in the eastern Atlantic area known as Macaronesia, Gran Canaria has a sample of very unusual landscapes. It is recognisable by its peculiar rounded shape, whose geometric perfection is altered by the expressive geographical features of La Isleta: a peninsula-like projection to the northeast; the Maspalomas point to the south and the crescent-shaped indentation between La Aldea point and Sardina point to the northwest. The Morro de la Agujereada, practically at its geometric centre, is the highest point on the island at 1956 metres above sea level.
The formation of the island has been the product of three major eruptive cycles, interspersed by periods of volcanic inactivity, during which erosive processes have prevailed. This heterogeneous distribution of volcanism on the island has divided it diagonally into two slopes with a marked geomorphological contrast: the southwestern or “Paleocanarian” half, formed almost exclusively by the volcanism of the juvenile stage and which has been heavily eroded over time, and the northeastern or “Neocanarian” half, occupied by the most recent Strombolian eruptions. The combination of these geomorphological factors together with the predominance of the N-NE trade winds determines a marked climatological and biological contrast. Thus, in the north-eastern part of the island, known as the “Alisiocanaria” sector, there is notable humidity, due to the influence of the north-easterly trade winds, which favour the formation of a sea of clouds during most of the year in a strip of land between 600 and 1500 m above sea level, making dense vegetation possible. On the other hand, in the south-western sector or “Xerocanaria”, the dryness of the environment is notorious, with relatively high temperatures and little vegetation.
With an average radius of 23 km and a surface area of just over 1560 km2, this island folds its skin in such a way as to create a network of radial ravines that descend from its summit, in the centre of the island, to the coast. Following this descending rule of slopes exposed to the prevailing winds, the island is organised into different levels of vegetation and unique ecosystems. The island’s coastal perimeter includes, to the north, its vertiginous cliffs, while to the south, we find its paradisiacal beaches of blond sand. Also, in the interior of the island, we find different ecosystems that are generated in ravines and hills, and which vary as we ascend, going from succulent plants and invertebrate fauna to forests with fascinating birdlife. A veritable “Garden of the Hesperides” of flora and fauna species that are unique in the world.
This interplay of relief, the different climatic conditions and the type of soil are the three interrelated environmental factors that define the scenery of the vineyard landscapes of Gran Canaria.
The Gran Canaria Wine Route was born from the relationship between different elements united by a common commitment: to create a product of an eminently cultural nature, with a focus on the tourism sector and the development of a sustainable economic system.
There are several services that give life to this experience: the hotel and catering industry, with accommodation and restaurants; wine services with wine cellars, visitable wine-growing areas and guahcinches/bochinches. There is no shortage of specialty shops and stores, as well as wine shops and agro-industries. Active tourism companies, local tour operators and tourist guides trained in wine tourism play an essential role.