Friday, 13 November 2015 05:30

La Gomera Wine: Cumbres de Garajonay White

Cumbres e Garajonay white wine from La Gomera Cumbres e Garajonay white wine from La Gomera

The only La Gomera wine available in Gran Canaria and an opportunity to try a grape with a mysterious past and great potential.

Cumbres de Garajonay is the flagship wine from La Gomera's co-op and is made from the forastera blanca grape that accounts for 90% of the island's vines.

Forastera blanca is a La Gomera speciality and grows nowhere else on Earth. Spoilsports who claimed that it is just the doradilla grape from Andalucia were recently proved wrong by a genetic study that showed that forastera is quite distinct from any known European variety. It's been growing and adapting to local conditions on La Gomera since the 1450s and is the island's best chance to develop a wine brand of its own. Forastera could be La Gomera's malvasia.

Tasting notes

Forastera is a much more acidic grape than the famous malvasia and listán blanco grapes that dominate on the other islands. 

Give this a good sniff and you find that it is so packed with minerality that it smells of a fossil collection or a duke's driveway; Flint and iron. There's also a teasing sweet hint of honey.

In the mouth it's acidic but balanced with lots of flint, a citrus fruitiness and also a hint of spice that is rare in Canarian whites.

For 5 euros this is good value and leaves you wondering what the forastera blanca grape could produce in the right hands. 

Sold in Carrefour and worth buying for the price before you even account for its unique provenance.

Great on its own or with seafood.

Published in Wine

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Tip of the day

  • The Parafarmacia In Gran Canaria Is Not A Chemist!
    The Parafarmacia In Gran Canaria Is Not A Chemist!

    If there is one thing we hate it is visitors being tricked in Gran Canaria. In the past we've warned about overcharging at Gran Canaria chemists, and rip off electronics shops in resorts. 

    In this Tip Of The Day we return to the island's chemists or rather, to the island's fake chemists.

    A chemist in Gran Canaria is called a Farmacia and always has a green cross sign. Farmacias are the only place tobuy medicine in Spain, even basics like paracetamol.

    However, there is another kind of shop in Gran Canaria that looks and sounds like a chemist but doesn't sell medicine. This is the Parafarmacia and it also uses a green cross sign.

    A parafarmacia is a herbal medicine shop that is not allowed to sell any normal medicine such as paracetamol, ibuprofen or antibiotics. 

    Instead, parafarmacias sell herbal alternatives to medicine but don't have to prove that they work and they can charge whatever they want.

    We recently heard from a visitor to Gran Canaria who went into a parafarmacia and was charged 40 euros for a herbal alternative to Ibuprofen. It was only when they read the label that they realised what had happened. 

    To locate a genuine farmacia, see this website and search within your municipio (Puerto Rico is in Mogán, Playa del Inglés is in San Bartolomé de Tirajana). At weekends and on fiesta days many farmacias close but there is always one open, known as the farmacia de guardia, in each municipio.

    Search for the nearest one to you with this tool

    Lex Says: To keep costs down, see this article for the way to ask for generic medicine rather than expensive branded alternatives. 

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