Every year, between late August and September, the vineyards of Tenerife enter their most intense moment: the grape harvest. But what happens in the island’s mid-altitude slopes, among volcanic soils and century-old vines, has little in common with the harvest we know in the rest of the world. At Bodegas Monje, in El Sauzal, this season isn’t just fieldwork — it’s the reason behind everything we do with wine.
A Harvest That Starts Where Almost the Rest of the Planet’s Ends
In most winegrowing regions, the vine’s life cycle still follows a pattern inherited from a 19th-century crisis: phylloxera. This plague, caused by an insect of American origin (Daktulosphaira vitifoliae), feeds on the roots of the European vine (Vitis vinifera) and devastated nearly all of the continent’s vineyards between 1860 and 1900. The solution that saved winemaking worldwide was to graft the European vine onto American rootstock, which is resistant to the pest. Since then, almost no “vinifera” vine on the planet still grows on its own root.
In the Canary Islands, that story unfolded differently. The insect needs to move through the soil to reach the roots, and the islands’ volcanic soils — loose, porous, formed from eruptive lapilli and ash — act as a physical barrier that hinders its movement and survival. Add to that the archipelago’s geographic isolation, which delayed the pest’s arrival until treatments already existed. The result is that Tenerife still preserves pre-phylloxera vines: vines planted directly on their own roots, ungrafted, some with decades — even more than a century — of uninterrupted genetic continuity in the same soil.
Harvesting here, then, is not simply gathering a crop. It’s gathering the fruit of a genetic heritage that disappeared from most of the world over a century ago.
Volcanic Soils: What They Really Bring to the Wine
Picón — the layer of volcanic lapilli covering much of northern Tenerife’s vineyards — isn’t just a scenic feature of the landscape. It’s an active component of cultivation.
Its porosity retains nighttime moisture and releases it slowly during the day, acting as a natural irrigation system on an island where rainfall is scarce. Its dark colour absorbs heat during the day and releases it at night, softening the temperature swing between day and night at higher elevations. And its mineral composition — rich in potassium, low in organic matter — forces the plant into slower, more contained growth, resulting in smaller clusters and greater concentration of aromatics and acidity than in conventional sedimentary soils.
That combination — moderate water stress, thermal oscillation and mineral content — is what gives Canary volcanic wines their distinctive saline, mineral character, and explains why they retain higher natural acidity than wines from warmer regions with similar ripeness profiles.
What It’s Like to Harvest a Terraced Vineyard
The third trait that sets the Canary harvest apart is the vineyard’s physical shape.
Unlike the neat, machine-friendly rows found in other winegrowing regions, Tenerife’s landscape imposes different rules. The vineyards grow on hillsides and dry-stone terraces — traditional walls that hold the soil on slopes that would be unworkable for cultivation anywhere else — where a mechanical harvester simply doesn’t fit. The harvest is done by hand, cluster by cluster, with crews working bunch by bunch and placing the grapes into small crates to prevent crushing before they reach the winery.
Vine training also reflects centuries of adaptation to the Atlantic wind. In the Canary Islands, several traditional systems coexist: the low bush (vaso bajo), with the vine pruned close to the ground for protection from the wind; the rastra, in which the vine’s arms are allowed to grow almost flat along the ground or over reed lattice; and, in specific areas such as the Orotava Valley, the cordón trenzado (braided cordon), a technique unique in the world in which the shoots themselves are woven together to form a structure that supports the plant without the need for wire trellising. Each system responds to a very specific microclimate and terrain within the island.
Add to this the altitude: in the mid-slopes of northern Tenerife — where Bodegas Monje’s vineyard sits, in El Sauzal, within the Tacoronte-Acentejo Denomination of Origin — the vine lives with a microclimate of its own, shaped by the sea’s influence and by the layer of cloud that gets trapped on the north-facing slope by the trade winds. That moderate altitude, combined with proximity to the Atlantic, delays ripening compared to lower areas and allows the grape to build sugar without losing acidity — a balance that proves key to the final quality of the wine.
Varieties That Exist Nowhere Else in the World
At Bodegas Monje, the harvest relies on native varieties unique to the archipelago: Listán Negro, Listán Blanco, Negramoll and Baboso Negro. These are grapes that arrived in the Canary Islands during colonisation and, having remained genetically isolated for centuries — without the crossbreeding that phylloxera and its subsequent grafting brought about across mainland Europe — still carry a genetic profile found almost nowhere outside the islands.
Listán Negro, the archipelago’s most widely planted red variety, produces medium-bodied, fresh wines with pronounced acidity. Baboso Negro, more scarce, brings structure and a spiced edge. Listán Blanco dominates the white varieties, with citrus, saline profiles that directly reflect the volcanic soil they come from. Grapes that arrive at the winery just as the land delivered them: ungrafted, with no varietal intermediaries, carrying the direct imprint of the volcano.
Experiencing the Harvest at Bodegas Monje
For anyone visiting the island during these weeks, the harvest doesn’t have to remain a curious fact in an article. At Bodegas Monje, it’s possible to walk the vineyard, understand the process first-hand — from the state of the cluster to the grapes’ arrival at the winery — and complete the visit with a tasting of the wines born from that same soil.
It’s a different way to discover Tenerife: not just beaches or volcanic trails, but the exact moment when the landscape becomes wine.
Frequently Asked Questions
When is the grape harvest in Tenerife? Grape harvesting in Tenerife’s main winegrowing areas takes place between late August and September, though timing varies depending on each vineyard’s altitude and microclimate.
Why aren’t Canary Island vines grafted? Because the island’s volcanic soils — loose and porous — hinder the movement and survival of phylloxera, the insect that forced vine grafting across almost the entire rest of the world from the late 19th century onward. This has allowed the Canary Islands to preserve pre-phylloxera vines, planted directly on their own roots.
What does volcanic soil bring to the flavour of the wine? Its porosity regulates moisture, its dark colour softens the temperature swing between day and night, and its richness in minerals such as potassium limits the plant’s growth, concentrating aromatics and acidity. It’s one of the factors behind the mineral, saline character typical of Canary volcanic wines.
Which grape varieties are native to the Canary Islands? Among the most representative are Listán Negro, Listán Blanco, Negramoll and Baboso Negro — native varieties found almost nowhere outside the archipelago.
Why is the Tenerife harvest done by hand? Because the terrain of the vineyards — hillsides and dry-stone terraces on volcanic picón soil — makes the use of harvesting machinery impossible, so the harvest remains an entirely artisanal process.
What is the cordón trenzado (braided cordon)? It’s a traditional vine training system found in specific areas of Tenerife, such as the Orotava Valley, in which the shoots are woven together to form a structure that supports the plant without the need for artificial trellising.
Discover the Harvest at Bodegas Monje
If you’d like to experience this unique season up close, at Bodegas Monje you can book a vineyard visit and a tasting of our volcanic wines in El Sauzal, Tenerife.
