2022 Puro Rofe Juan Bello Blanco
WINEMAKER: Carmelo Pena
REGION: Canary Islands, SP
VARIETY: Malvasía Volcánica, Listán Blanco, Diego
VITICULTURE: Organic
EXTREMELY LIMITED. "The nose of the 2022 Juan Bello is quite austere, and although the place seems to cushion the effect of the year, you could think it is even more austere on the nose than the 2021 I tasted next to it. In the end, the 2022 reveals the rounder character of the year. It has a slightly deeper color too." - Luis Gutiérrez, Wine Advocate
Lanzarote lies less than 100 kilometres from Western Sahara and, of all the Islands in the Canaries, it feels and looks the most like an extension of the African continent. Unlike Tenerife or La Palma where a single volcano dominates the landscape, Lanzarote is composed of literally hundreds of smaller volcanoes, which have tended to erupt simultaneously in the past, creating a moonscape littered with volcanoes and craters.
The last major eruption here in the 1730s blanketed the entire island with small, black, aerated pebbles, like jet black pumice, which the locals call ‘rofe.’ It’s these pebbles that give the island its unique appearance and altered the terroir of Lanzarote so dramatically that viticulture only became possible after the 1730s eruptions. The rofe fittingly provides the name for our producer here, Puro Rofe, winemakers attempting the expression of pure volcanic stone.