Envinate - Benje Blanco, Tenerife (2021)

A smoky, salty, high-toned white wine. Lots of texture and minerality, with linear precise acidity, orchard fruit and Atlantic-infused ocean vibes. 

Benje Blanco is sourced from several old-vine, untrained pie franco parcels of Listan Blanco. Each parcel is hand-harvested and vinified separately in a mix of concrete tank and open tubs.

75% of the fruit is pressed directly off the skins, the other 25% is skin- macerated 14-40 days between 18-30C. The wine is then raised for 8 months in 60% concrete and 40% old French barriques on fine lees without battonage or added SO2. Bottled without filtration.

Viticulture is organic. The soil is worked by hand without using any kind of chemicals. The vines are free-standing, completely untrained. The main challenges to viticulture are winds from the Atlantic and Africa and fluctuations in humidity. Harvesting is done by hand.

Enviate is a collaboration between four friends from four different regions of Spain, the Canary Islands, Galicia, Extremadura and Almansa. Winemakers Roberto Santana, Alfonso Torrente, Laura Ramos, and José Martínez met while studying oenology and formed a wine consultancy and later Envínate, with the goal of expressing the distinctive terroirs of Spain and its Atlantic coastline. What makes Envínate special is its completely natural winemaking process, identical and consistent in each of Envínate’s four winemaking facilities. The team uses absolutely no chemicals in their process – all parcels are hand-picked, grapes are foot-trodden and wines are fermented exclusively with wild yeasts. Sulphur is only added to the wine prior to bottling, if necessary.