Island Wines For Summer Daydreamin'
Here's what to know about Mallorca and the Canary Islands, making some of the most exciting wines in the world right now.
Right off the jump, I must apologize. I’ve been listening to Jimmy Buffett as I write this newsletter. Why? I don’t know. Why not? Perhaps because this dispatch is about island wines. It has a nice ring, doesn’t it? Island wines. Feels like the name of a Jimmy Buffett song. Not one of the famous songs the cover band plays at the local bar on the bay. “Island Wines” would be a minor Buffett song, something with heavy xylophone and steel guitar that only a Boomer Parrothead—maybe someone who lives in the Margaritaville retirement village—would know. Alas, I’ve searched the Jimmy Buffett catalog on Spotify and sadly there is no such song called “Island Wines.” But let’s pretend, shall we?
In any case, the island wines I want to talk about today have absolutely nothing to do with Jimmy Buffett. I want to discuss the wines from both the Canary Islands and Mallorca (or Majorca as we spell it in English). What unites these two very different Spanish islands, one in the Atlantic and one in the Mediterranean, is that some of the most exciting wines in the world are being made in both places.
In Madrid and Barcelona, wine bar menus are full of light red wines made from varieties such as listán negro and listán prieto—the main red grapes from the Canary Islands, as well as callet and prensal, the main native red and white varieties of Mallorca.
Over the past few years, we’ve been seeing more and more Canary Islands wines at influential big-city wine bars in the U.S., but widespread recognition still has a ways to go. And Mallorca is still relatively terra incognita for wine drinkers.
