Rooted in Tenerife’s tradition: guachinches and winemaking

The Rooted in Tradition: networking for sustainability project selected by Slow Food to receive the 2023 Negroni Week Innovation Award, proposes participatory, capacity-building and networking activities amongst the Tenerife winemaking community including winemakers and guachinche-owners to address these challenges.

Jessica Martín and Tomas Mesa, of Ruku Ruku Wines and Juan Felipe García, of Bodega Finca Marañuela, are members of the Slow Wine Coalition and actively work for the preservation of guachinches. Jessica, in addition to making wine with her partner and enologist Tomas as Ruku Ruku Wine, is the owner of Guachinche Ramón which is one of three guachinches partnering in the Rooted in Tradition project. They operate in the Orotava valley where the phenomenon of guachinches first emerged in Tenerife.

Ruku Ruku Wine and Guachinche Ramón

Jessica opened Guanchinche Ramón in 2021 and bottled the first 720 bottles of Ruku Ruku Wine produced with organic methods in the same year. The wine was produced from Jessica’s family vineyards that Jessica had transformed to organic agriculture.  In just a few years Jessica has demonstrated determination, connection with her territory and belief in her vision to promote the unique gastronomy and viticulture of Tenerife to locals and visitors, including the tradition of guachinches. Jessica’s story is inspiring as she has overcome obstacles in her wine journey such as an initial lack of support for her vision for organic farming, the bottling of high-quality wine to make it available to a wider market, and the firmly held gender stereotype that wine is not a woman’s world, to create a pathway for other local women to work in gastronomy in Tenerife. For example, Guachinche Ramón is run by a team of local women, all passionate about continuing the gastronomic traditions of Tenerife and empowered by continued employment and working in a positive environment.

Bodega Finca Marañuela

Felipe of Bodega Finca Marañuela together with his sisters makes wine from autochthonous vines using organic farming methods in their family’s finca or plot, continuing the work of their father to make wine from regenerative viticulture practices that focus on cultivating and celebrating biodiversity. Felipe’s great grandfather planted some of the centuries-old vines that still exist today in their family’s estate. In 2021, Felipe and his siblings opened a small winery dedicated to producing natural wines made exclusively with grapes from their estate and with organic methods. Whilst Bodega Finca Marañuela does not operate a guachinche, Felipe’s father owned a guachinche in the late 1960s to sell his wine to obtain an additional income to support his family of five children at a time when Tenerife was very poor, prior to the boom of the tourism economy. Bodega Finca Marañuela promotes the gastronomic traditions of Tenerife today by sharing traditions and wines with visitors to the winery, and by spreading the word about authentic guachinches.

Winemaking on Tenerife

Tenerife is the largest and most extensively planted island with 65% of all vines in the Canary Islands. This rich viticultural heritage has been shaped by centuries of European visitors that brought grapevines to the island and is represented by approximately 1,500 hectares of vineyards with over 30 autochthonous varieties untouched by phylloxera. For this reason, many of the vines are centuries-old and ungrafted, with grape varieties now found only on Tenerife finding their roots in soils of volcanic origin which are generally poor and stony.

Vineyards are planted in the north and south of the island and are characterised by diverse microclimates due to Tenerife’s varying topography and altitude, which reaches 3,718 metres above sea level at the top of Mount Teide, the highest mountain in Spain and an active volcano. Trade winds, the cold Atlantic current, and the Azores high, a subtropical high-pressure system, are all climatic factors which act on the island.

The “Valle de La Orotava”, Orotava valley, extends from the foothills of Mount Teide to the northern coastline of Tenerife. The protagonists of the Rooted in Tradition project (and Bodega Finca Marañuela): Guachinche Ramón, Guachinche La Casona de Montijo and Guachinche Casa Lala, all have their guachinches and primary vineyards in the Orotava Valley.

This area is where the tradition of guachinches first emerged and it is home to centuries-old vineyards planted on an ungrafted rootstock in the Cordón Trenzado or braided cord trellis system. 

The ingenious method of the Cordón Trenzado which represents hundreds of years of tradition, originated as an adaptation of the first farmers to the steep landscape and limited agricultural area of the volcano’s slopes. This trellis system made it possible to plant free-standing vines in areas with unproductive soil, and to plant winter crops such as grains and tubers in vineyard areas with fertile soil in the area beneath the braided, dormant vine. In this way the crops provided nutrients and preserved soil moisture of the vineyard, and generated crops for sustenance and to sell for an additional income.

The phenomenon of guachinches

A guachinche is a traditional and informal family-run “restaurant” or gastronomic establishment that first emerged in the late 1960s as a way for farmers to sell their home-grown wine directly to local consumers to gain an additional income.

The wine was sold by farmers to locals as inexpensive bulk wine, that is unlabelled and unbottled. Following the grape harvest, locals would knock on the door of the guachinches, which typically took the form of a garage attached to the farmers home, to request to buy wine to either drink or to take away in larger demijohns or containers. In the guachinche, wine was generally served in small portions to encourage social interaction.

Traditional and simple Canarian dishes made only with a few ingredients grown in the winemaker’s own garden or vineyard plots, such as potatoes and tomatoes, were served to accompany the wine. These dishes include papas arrugadas con mojo (wrinkled potatoes with mojo sauce) and gofio which is a roasted cereal flour, an ingredient that is a versatile accompaniment to many Canarian dishes.

Farmers opened their guachinches following the harvest of their grapes to sell their vino de cosecha or “harvest wines” and closed when there was no more wine to sell.

The Slow Wine Coalition as a valuable tool for guachinches preservation

Jessica and Felipe both believe that being part of the Slow Wine Coalition is a valuable tool for the preservation and sustainable adaptation of guachinches into the future and will help address some of their current challenges threatening their decline. Jessica elaborates:

“This approach would promote traditional cuisine and local ingredients, educate visitors about the importance of Canarian culinary traditions, allow guachinche owners to adapt to tourist demand without losing their essence, strengthen the community by creating a support network between producers, chefs, and consumers, and ensure the transmission of recipes and culinary techniques to new generations.”

Felipe believes that this collaboration with Slow Food will strengthen the cause to continue the gastronomic tradition of guachinches because the Slow Food movement is international and respected: “If Slow Food helps us and supports us, then I think the government of the Canary Islands will listen to our cause”.

Tenerife at 2025 Slow Wine Fair

Jessica Martín and Juan Felipe shared their vibrant wines and passion for the traditions of their unique territory when they attended the Slow Wine Fair. Jessica, Tomas and Felipe were also active participants in the activities of the Slow Wine Coalition, sharing their expertise in the management of old vines, autochthonous vines and their experiences regarding gender gap in the wine sector – all key themes of the 2025 Slow Wine Fair.

The participation of Tenerife winemakers at Slow Wine Fair as one of the outcomes of the Rooted in Tradition project, which seeks to enhance the opportunity for networking and collaboration.

Rooted in Tradition funded by Negroni

The participation of Tenerife winemakers at Slow Wine Fair is one of the important outcomes of Rooted in Tradition, funded by Negroni Week, an initiative presented by Imbibe and Campari and realized in collaboration with Slow Food.

According to Jessica Martín: “The integration of the principles of Slow Food through the Rooted in Tradition project will help protect and promote guachinches as an integral part of Canarian culture, balancing the preservation of tradition with the need to adapt to economic and social changes. This will not only ensure the survival of guachinches but also reinforce their relevance in the future, keeping alive a fundamental part of the Canary Islands’ culinary and cultural heritage.”

The project partners are supported by the Social Sciences, Heritage and Food from the Instituto de Productos Naturales y Agrobiología, a Spanish Government research centre which in recent years has conducted foundational research into the unique dynamic between guachinches and winemaking on Tenerife.

by Gen Pezzimenti