2022 Bien de Altura Ikewen Listan Negro

WINEMAKER: Carmelo Pena
REGION: Canary Islands, SP
VARIETY: Listán Negro
VITICULTURE: Organic/Biodynamic

Ikewen means ‘origin’ and is named in honour of Carmelo’s family and their role in helping him start Bien de Altura. It’s a collection of small plots around the Lomo de Sepltura in San Mateo, mostly from the southern side of the ridge. Between 1,100 and 1,500m absl. Each parcel is divided by soil type and grape, then processed separately.

Bien de Altura is a tiny project on the island of Gran Canaria, run and owned by young Canary native Carmelo Pena. The island is starkly beautiful, but the ‘heroic’ nature of its vineyards and the burgeoning tourist economy of the island has pushed viticulture there to the brink of extinction. Gran Canaria produces around 5% of its historical volumes of wine and the vast majority of its vineyards have disappeared altogether. It’s Carmelo’s hope, through Bien de Altura and a land-bank he’s trying to run with the help of the local government, that he can save the few remaining ‘Gran Cru’s’ of his island. The project zeros in on the village of San Mateo, using old vines recovered through careful biodynamic farming at altitudes between 1,300 and 1,500m absl. Hence the name ‘Bien de Altura’ (Good from Altitude). The extreme altitudes offer both big diurnal temperature fluctuation and low disease pressure; the vineyards are literally above the clouds that ring the waist of the main volcano like hula-hoop. The volcanic soils here are dominated by ‘picon’ loose red volcanic pebbles like the Rofe of Lanzarote, but unlike Lanzarote where the Rofe sit in a thick blanket over the landscape, the Picon of Gran Canaria are suspended in a mixture of silt, clay, and organic matter. Resulting in wines of much greater elegance which speak softly of their volcanic terroir, where the graphite-smoke-mineral line is an ever-present background note rather than the dominant force. Allowing delicate fruit profiles and exotic spice to come to the fore.

The wines borrow names from the Berber language of Gran Canaria’s indigenous people, who predate Arab and European colonisation of northern Africa and the Canaries. It’s an acknowledgement of and reckoning with the colonial and indigenous history of the island. Carmelo himself is part Berber, the characters on the label are Agan and the writing tattooed on Carmelo’s legs come from that language.

Carmelo himself is wild, energetic, bursting with enthusiasm, seemingly disdainful of wearing anything other than thongs or going barefoot through vineyards and winery. Beneath that joyous exterior and massive smile is a very serious wine maker. Despite his young age, he founded Bien de Altura at thirty, his resume speaks for itself; a postgraduate degree in enology from the University of Tarragona followed by several vintages with Dirk Niepoort and Raul Perez before becoming the founding wine maker of Puro Rofe in Lanzarote. Between all that he’s also managed to sandwich in vintage experience with the likes of Pedro Parra in Chile, Suertes de Marques on Tenerife and his close friend Cesar Marquez in Bierzo. These wines are the culmination of that personality and those experiences, hedonistically perfumed, technically adept and precise, and yet joyous and warm.