Atlante

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Atlante 2019 Listan Negro, Valle de la Orotava DO (Tenerife)

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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.

Atlante takes its name both from the nearby Atlantic Ocean and from Atlantis, which some believe, make up the Canary Island. Jesús has 3 hectares planted to Listán Blanco (known as Palomino Fino on the mainland) and Listán Negro, as well as numberous other lesser seen varieties. Their vines are staggeringly old on the whole, with many vines exceeding 150 years of age, all ungrafted and planted in the heavily volcanic soils of the Valle de la Orotava. Tenerife possesses a distinctive training system known as Cordon Trenzado wherein numerous branches are intertwined in braid-like fashion and allowed to grow to great lengths. This prevents the need for potentially disruptive deep cuts during pruning and allows the vines to survive and remain productive for many years, and over 80% of Jesús’ vines are trained in such a way.

In the cellar, Jesús favors a light touch, informed by old Tenerife winegrowing traditions. Fermentations proceed spontaneously and without temperature stabilization, and the red wines are partly foot-trod and fermented in shallow cement vats whose more “horizontal” orientation allows for a greater surface of skin contact and facilitates a more rapid and thorough fermentation. Pressing takes place in a traditional old vertical wooden basket press, and the wines age in used 600-liter casks before being bottled without fining or filtration of any kind.