El Hierro is off the beaten path. It is the smallest and least visited of the Canary Islands, and while it boasts some of the best hiking around, many of its accommodations are humble and more rustic compared to the resorts of its better-known neighbors. El Hierro also happens to be the youngest of the Canaries, a very spry 100 million years old, made evident by its chiseled and rough-hewn topography. Only 167 hectares of vines remain on El Hierro, yet despite this fact, it boasts the greatest genetic and clonal diversity of vines in all of the Canaries. For these reasons, Rayco Fernández, one of the founding members of Puro Rofe in Lanzarote, was drawn to El Hierro, convinced that these little-known islands had a bright future.
Bimbache was created in 2018 with a meager 5 hectares of vineyards spread among the three municipalities of El Hierro: Valverde, Frontera, and El Pinar. The Island is roughly triangular in shape with a crescent-shaped escarpment running from the northeast to the west. This cliff faces the prevailing tradewinds ensuring plenty of moisture reaches the vines in Frontera in the north and Valverde in the northeast while blocking El Pinar in the south from receiving much moisture at all. As a result, the average rainfall in the northern part of the Island is 70cm, while the south only sees 15cm in an average year.
All the vineyards that Rayco and Pablo control are farmed organically, and harvest is manual. The whites are pressed whole cluster while the red is largely destemmed. All fermentations are spontaneous, and currently, there is no temperature control apart from the winery being located in an exposed and windy part of El Hierro. These are salty, tangy, and savory wines that combine the best qualities of being mountain, ocean, and volcanic wines all rolled into one. We are excited to have the first great El Hierro estate in our portfolio.