Anyone lucky enough to have been to an island paradise knows just how special it feels. There’s a certain quality of light, the sensation of warm sea breezes on the face, and scents of flowers in the air. Time can seem to slow down a bit, encouraging us to just lie back in that hammock and doze the day away.
In the context of island paradises, we’re far more predisposed to imagine tropical drinks with paper umbrellas in them than we are to think about wine, but truthfully, some of the world’s most interesting, compelling, and uniquely delicious wines in the world come from islands.
Wines grown on islands almost always have special qualities. Whether they are raised on fiery volcanos, windswept archipelagos, tropical paradises, or stony sea outcrops, island wines are some of the most unique wines in the world. They often feature little-known grapes grown in places that are so far off the beaten path you have to take a boat to get there.
I was recently asked to present a seminar at the Taste of Vail wine and food festival in Colorado. Amid that snowy paradise, I opted to share six bottles that demonstrate the magic of island wines.
Chapter One: Armageddon, Santorini
Most people have heard of Krakatoa, the cataclysmic 19th-century volcanic eruption that all but obliterated the island of the same name. Well, that eruption was child’s play compared to the 15th-Century-BCE detonation that left behind the little slivers of land that are now the Greek archipelago of Santorini.
At least 6 and perhaps as many as 8 or 10 times more powerful than the Krakatoa eruption, the force of the Santorini detonation is estimated to have been two or three times larger than Hiroshima and Nagasaki… combined. The resulting shockwave triggered tsunamis throughout the Mediterranean that may have been more than 500 feet high, wiping out a huge swath of the Minoan civilization then occupying Crete and other islands in the region, in the process potentially giving rise to the myth of Atlantis.
The tiny bits of land left behind from this cataclysm consist almost entirely of volcanic ash and rubble, but not only have they been resettled, they have become one of the world’s great tourist destinations, and unbeknownst to some, one of the world’s great wine regions. Santorini receives a scant 12 inches (297mm) of rain per year, but somehow manages to grow some truly delicious tomatoes and some truly outstanding wine grapes, both of which quest deeply into the endless ash and pumice for moisture and minerals.
This lack of moisture, combined with the brutally incessant winds on the island, has given rise to a unique method of vine training called the kouloura, in which the canes of the grapevine are continually trained into a basket shape that rests directly on the ground and shelters the bunches of grapes from the elements.
From a distance, the vineyards of Santorini look more like abandoned lots taken over by bushy weeds, but they are in fact, painstakingly tended by hand, as mechanization is utterly impossible with this type of viticulture. The grapes grown are predominantly white, dominated by the Assyrtiko variety, but include as many as 23 other varieties, many indigenous to the island.
Santorini’s white wines, raised in the deep volcanic ash and whipped by the ocean winds have an intense saline minerality and stony purity that makes them utterly refreshing and at the same time mysteriously profound. In particular, as they age, the wines get saltier and richer, transforming in the way that a great Riesling can blossom into something close to ambrosia.
Like many families on Santorini, the Sigalas family had long grown grapes for their own winemaking purposes, but in 1991, mathematician Paris Sigalas decided to turn the family tradition into a fully commercial enterprise and founded Domaine Sigalas, which has become not only one of the best producers on the island but in all of Greece.
The Sigalas Assyrtiko is made from 100% Assyrtiko, farmed organically, and fermented and aged in steel tanks. The vines are on average, 60 years old.
2022 Domaine Sigalas Assyrtiko, Santorini, Greece
Palest gold in the glass, this wine smells of smells of honeysuckle, lemon, and wet pavement. In the mouth, briny flavors of lemon pith combine with white flowers, wet chalkboard, and a hint of honey, though the wine is bone dry. Wonderfully stony and saline with fantastic acidity. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $38. click to buy.
Chapter Two: Braids of Life, Canary Islands
The Canary Islands are a volcanic archipelago that sits off the northwest coast of Morocco and Western Sahara but are technically part of Spain. These rugged islands, dominated by volcanic cinder cones, some of which are still active volcanoes, offer many extremes of climate ranging from sub-tropical beaches to high-altitude deserts that see snow in winter and everything in between.
The island of Tenerife plays host to nearly a million residents, and like many of the Canaries, hosts a long tradition of winegrowing, vines having been established there during the Spanish conquest in the 15th century. As a frequent port of call in both the age of exploration and the beginnings of global trade that followed, the Canaries provided many a thirsty mariner with their ration of wine.
Once the New World and the trading route around the Cape of Good Hope had been discovered, the Canaries were a frequent final stop for explorers, conquistadors, and immigrants before the Atlantic crossing. This fact explains how the indigenous Listan Prieto managed to make its way to South and North America, where it would become, as País and Mission, a crucial beginning for New World viticulture.
One of the peculiarities of Canary Island viticulture, and specifically the vineyards of the Valle de Orotava on the island of Tenerife, has long been their use of a unique vine training system known as trenzado, or cordon trenzado. Trenzado, which means braided, involves just that: twisting and overlapping the new growth of the vine to one or both sides of the trunk. This has been done for so long with old vines that these braids can extend for 30 or 40 feet and be as thick as a human torso.
Believed to have been pioneered by early farmers who wanted to keep their vines nice and tidy and somewhat movable to allow them to cultivate other crops between the rows, this vine training method has become a unique and visually spectacular signature of Tenerife winegrowing.
The wines of the Canary Islands often have a salty character but also a fiery one, sometimes smelling like brimstone or the vaguely flinty quality of two rocks banged against one another. They are deeply mineral, usually shimmering with acidity and vibrancy that compels another sip.
Envínate, which translates to “wine yourself,” or as I like to think of it, “wine yourself up!” is a project of four friends who met during their enology studies in Spain. Upon graduating, Roberto Santana, Alfonso Torrente, Laura Ramos, and José Martínez formed a winemaking consultancy together, which eventually turned into a wine brand spanning multiple wine projects with an emphasis on indigenous grape varieties and old vineyards in Ribeira Sacra region and the Canary Islands.
With an extreme focus on site expression, the Envínate crew makes exceptional wines from some of the world’s most spectacular and extreme vineyards, with minimal intervention and minimal sulfur additions before bottling.
Their Palo Blanco bottling comes from 100 to 200-year-old, own-rooted vineyards of Listan Blanco (aka Palomino) in Tenerife’s Valle de Orotava region trained with the Trenzado method. The wine is pressed from whole clusters and then fermented in concrete. Malolactic conversion is prevented and then the wine is aged in large oak foudres for 10 months before bottling.
2022 Envínate “Palo Blanco” Listan Blanco, Canary Islands, Spain
Light gold in the glass, this wine smells of brimstone and hot desert rocks, as if you’re getting a whiff of the volcano itself. The more you keep smelling it the more you’re convinced you also smell a hint of the sea breeze. In the mouth, the wine is quite deliciously stony and salty, with grapefruit and wet pavement mixing with sea air and citrus pith. Fantastic acidity. Score: around 9. Cost: $55. click to buy.
Chapter Three: Wine & Whales, Azores
Even farther out in the Atlantic, lie the nine tiny islands of the Azores, which represent the farthest western piece of Europe on the globe. Formed by the meeting of three tectonic plates and the magma that slips up between their cracks, these volcanic islands were truly the very last vestige of civilization that could be encountered before early explorers literally fell off the map.
The first Portuguese settlers arrived in the Azores in around 1497 and vines were planted shortly thereafter, especially on Pico Island, which is the epicenter of winegrowing in the archipelago. On Pico, almost every local family has a small vineyard plot, making for thousands of different wine producers on the islands, but there are still less than two dozen or so commercial producers.
According to my friend Erin Scala, who created a lovely podcast episode about Pico, about 180 years ago, the wines of Pico were exported as far away as Moscow (beloved by the Czars, and Popes apparently), and the island hosted easily ten times more vineyards than it does today. Pico wines feature prominently in the wine menus and newspaper advertisements of the early 1820s on America’s East Coast and Western Europe.
As much as the Azores were known for wine at the time, they were even better known for whales. Several species of whale, but in particular Sperm Whales, have long made their home around the Azores, and ensured that the Azores were a key player in the Atlantic whaling trade for almost a century. The whalers needed booze to keep their crews happy, and a poor whaling hunt could sometimes be made up for through the sale of a few barrels of wine to America, keeping the whaling industry and wine industry deeply intertwined.
In 1850, Pico suffered a massive blight of downy mildew which destroyed the harvests on the island for several years. Not much later in 1865 fossil fuels were discovered, and the whaling industry (which made most of its money on whale oil) dramatically declined shortly thereafter. The economic impact of these successive events was devastating to the islands, and the wine industry wouldn’t recover for more than 100 years.
The vineyards of the Azores, and on Pico island in particular, are unlike any others in the world. They sit right at the edge of the sea, where they are buffeted by strong winds and quite literally washed constantly in a salty spray of ocean water. As a buffer against the constant wind and waves, each grapevine is enclosed in its own small yard, called a currais, made with walls of stacked black lava stones. The ground, too, is black lava stone, with only the barest hint of dirt on top of the hard and sharp crumbles of old lava flows. Because of the intense winds, new growing shoots of the vines must be weighed down individually with rocks to keep them from thrashing in the wind and breaking.
These are some of the hardest vineyards to farm in the world, and yet people still do it. This unique viticultural approach became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004.
Wines from the Azores, and Pico in particular possess an incredible texture and vibrancy. They are often salty, thanks to the proximity of the sea and its frequent storms which quite literally wash them in sea spray. The glassy, stony quality of the wines often seems to mirror the harsh volcanic landscape, but the aromatics of the wines sometimes soar with a tropicality that is surprising.
The Azores Wine Company is part of the growing winemaking empire of the young Antonio Maçanita, who has become one of the most prominent winemakers in Portugal over the past 20 years. With a father from the Azores and a mother from Alentejo, Maçanita has projects in several Portuguese wine regions, but his heart is in the Azores, where he planted his first vines during college. Then in 2010, he learned that one of the native grapes of the island, Terrantez de Pico, was about to go extinct, and he found his calling.
In 2013 he launched what he thought was going to be a consulting project, but when few producers wanted his consulting services, it turned into a winemaking project with the mission of putting the Azores back on the map from a wine perspective.
This wine is made from Verdelho, which is one of the three main grapes of the Azores, not to be confused with the Spanish Verdejo. The grapes are sourced from Pico and two other islands in the archipelago. It is whole-cluster pressed and fermented with native yeasts in steel. Roughly 30% of the wine is aged for 6 months in old oak barrels.
2021 Azores Wine Company “o Original” Verdelho, Azores, Portugal
Light yellow-gold in the glass, this wine smells of yellow flowers and citrus peel washed in salty sea air. In the mouth, the wine is a salty lemon neon explosion, with laser bright acidity and wonderfully salty candied Meyer lemon rind and crushed rocks mixing with that tidepool salinity. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $47. click to buy.
Chapter Four: Isle of Stone, Corsica
The fourth largest island in the Mediterranean, Corsica sits just north of Sardinia, craggy with mountains and heavily forested on its interior, beautifully rocky with gorgeous beaches and crystalline turquoise waters at its perimeter.
Corsica has been part of France since 1768, but remains quite aligned with Italy in many ways, not least of which are the names of its wine grape varieties, much to the dismay of many a wine student (and myself), who has to grapple with that cognitive dissonance.
I’ve called Corsica the Isle of Stone, but as far as I’m concerned, it just as easily could have been called the Isle of Rosé. There are few sure bets in the world of wine, but pink wine from Corsica is just about as close to a sure bet as I know of. The combination of granite and schist soils, the cool sea breezes, and often older vine material make for wines that have a wonderful perfume, stony grit, and mouthwatering litheness to them. I will just come right out and say it: I’ve never had a Corsican rosé that I haven’t liked, and some of them have been among the best rosés I’ve ever tasted.
Corsica grows a wide variety of grapes, but it is perhaps best known for its red grape Nielluccio, better known elsewhere in the world as Sangiovese, which is used to make the island’s rich, age-worthy Patrimonio wines. Corsica’s other red grape Sciaccarellu, isn’t exactly native either, but has reached its apotheosis on Corsica as the primary source for the island’s pink wines.
Domaine de Marquiliani is located midway down the eastern coast of the island, nestled into the foothills of Mount Renosu. The domain was started by the Amalric family in the 1950s, or more accurately, restarted, as the estate had a 250+ year old history before it burned to the ground early in the 20th Century.
Daniel Amalric rebuilt the estate and replanted the vineyards including the first plantings of Nielluccio and Syrah on the eastern side of the island. Daniel’s daughter Anne has gradually taken over for her father and works both in the vineyard and the cellar to produce small quantities of very high-quality wine and olive oil. The domaine is certified sustainable.
This wine, named after Anne’s daughter, Pauline, is a blend of 80% Sciaccarellu, 15% Vermentino, and 5% Syrah direct pressed to stainless steel for fermentation and aging. Sciaccarellu is the Corsican name for the grape Mammolo, which is found as a minor blending partner often paired with Sangiovese in Tuscany. In Sardinia, however, it is one of the most important red grapes and has proven to be able to make wines of great power, finesse, and longevity, as well as wonderfully saline and perfumed pink wines that long ago stole my heart.
2021 Domaine de Marquiliani “Le Rosé de Pauline” Rosé Blend, Corsica, France
So pale peach in color, that this wine is quite easily mistaken for a white wine, this wine smells of floral and faint berry aromas. In the mouth, the wine is beautifully silky with flavors of berries, flowers, and deeply mineral, wet stone. Citrus pith emerges on the finish. Fantastic acidity and minerality. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $35. click to buy.
Chapter Five: Vulcan’s Own, Etna
There’s something thrilling, and just a little bit insane, about making wine on one of Europe’s largest and most active volcanoes. But people have been doing it for millennia. Viticulture in Sicily predates the Greek colonization in the 8th Century BCE, and in all likelihood that is true for Etna as well. The Greeks immediately recognized the value of Etna’s volcanic soils and established viticultural traditions that continued through the Roman era and into the Renaissance.
Thanks to periodic eruptions large and small, a fine layer of pulverized volcanic ash and stone accumulates around the volcano. Combined with the slow and steady action of the vegetation that manages to find its way into the nooks and crannies of ancient lava flows, fine, inorganic soil gradually develops on and amongst the stark remains of molten stone. Into this powdered stone, and then deeper into the cracks of the lava flows themselves, grapevines can bury their roots and eke out enough of an existence to produce fruit every year.
Winemaking traditionally takes place in a zone between 300 and 1100 meters of elevation around the northern, eastern, and southern flanks of the volcano, with vines trained in the traditional albarello fashion, their scraggly overgrown heads often supported by a wooden stake. The primary grapes are those that have been grown on Etna for as long as anyone can remember: the red Nerello Mascalese and the white Carricante, backed up by their less common counterparts Nerello Cappuccio and Catarratto.
More than most wines in the world, the wines of Etna seem to taste like liquified stone. The whites have a stony minerality that can also feature salinity influenced by the sea, but the reds and their powdered-stone tannins convey the impression of fresh berries and flowers filtered through the very rock itself.
In 2017 Sicilian journalist Giulia Monteleone and her father decided to purchase a small plot of land towards the base of Etna and begin a wine project. They hired Monteleone’s boyfriend at the time (now husband), Benedetto Alessandro to make the wines from their two-hectare plot, as well as from some other vineyards they managed to lease on the mountain. They are relative newcomers to the mountain and representative of the huge wave of investment and development happening on the volcano at the moment.
This wine comes from an ancient vineyard plot the family leases, sporting gnarled old vines planted in 1911. It is predominantly Nerello Mascalese, with the family having sorted out most of the other grape varieties that are invariably interplanted in such centenarian vineyards.
2021 Monteleone “Rumex” Nerello Mascalese, Etna Rosso Sicily, Italy
Light ruby in the glass, this wine smells of stony saline berries and flowers. In the mouth, powdery tannins wrap around a core of juicy, bright, fresh berries, herbs, and crushed stones. Fantastic acidity, wonderful salinity, and muscular but supple tannins. Own-rooted vines planted in 1911. Outstanding. Score: around 9.5. Cost: $75. click to buy.
Chapter Six: Atlantis, Sardinia
When the tidal waves created by the Santorini explosion spread throughout the Mediterranean, one of the places they might have wiped out a budding civilization (and given rise to the Atlantean myth) was the island of Sardinia, which still shows ample evidence of a mysterious tower-building civilization about which comparatively little is known. Forms of this Nuragic culture populated the island from the 18th Century BCE until the Roman colonization in the year 238, making good use of the island’s granite to create buildings whose remains can still be seen today.
The second largest island in the Mediterranean (after Sicily) Sardinia is a land of dramatic contrasts, with rugged interior mountains dropping down to pristine sandy beaches. Its geology is a combination of the granitic heart of the mountains combined with significant limestone deposits from a period when the island was partially submerged under a shallow sea.
Sardinia, like Corsica, used to be part of Europe, and split off sometime between 23 million and 5.3 million years ago, as the microplate that contains both islands rotated into its current position. Its relatively old age (compared with volcanic islands) has provided time for the mountains to erode into stony soils that provide great drainage and reasonable fertility for grapevines to prosper.
With several key traditional grape varieties, such as Cannonau (aka Grenache), Carignan, and Vermentino, Sardinia has a long history of making distinctive wines. I use the word traditional instead of “native” quite deliberately, as none of these grapes truly originated on the island. Be that as it may, the combination of granite (and sometimes limestone) soils combined with the moderating influence of the sea, generally imbues Sardinian wines with a stony vivacity and an energy that makes the island rendition of these grapes quite unique.
AgriPunica is a project born in 2002 of the collaboration between the owners of Sassicaia and their legendary winemaker Giacomo Tachis along with the Santadi family, who have been making wine for decades in Sardinia. With the additional help and investment of Marquis Incisa Della Rocchetta and others, they purchased two estates in the southwestern Sardinian region of Sulcis, known for its long history with the grape variety Carignan.
In the tradition of the SuperTuscan wines that made Sassicaia and Solaia so famous, Barrua is a blend of 85% Carignan, 10% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 5% Merlot aged for 18 months in French oak and then another 6 months in the bottle.
2019 AgriPunica “Barrua” Carignan Blend, Isola dei Nuraghi, Sardinia, Italy
Dark garnet in the glass, this wine smells of freshly turned earth, dark fruits, cola, and flowers. In the mouth, juicy flavors of berry, cola, earth, and cedar are wrapped in fine-grained tannins. There’s great acidity here, and a very judicious use of wood. Score: around 9. Cost: $50. click to buy.
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There you go, a little slice of paradise told in six chapters. There are plenty more islands and their wines to seek out, best done in person, of course. Just in case you needed an excuse to book an island getaway.
