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 The people who make a difference in the Canary Islands Manuel and Fernando Luengo, CEO and Manager of Tierra de Frontos bodega, restaurant and park A family affair The smash-hit wine tasting in the middle of March piqued our interest so we arranged to meet Manuel and Fernando Luengo, the CEO and manager of Tierra de Frontos. Literally hundreds of you, experts and enthusiastic amateurs, turned up to taste the wines that Frontos had on offer, around 120 stayed to eat in the restaurant and most took home bottle packs to try at home and impress their friends. There was a great buzz in the air as people chatted and compared notes on their selections as they wandered around the incomparable finca enjoying the views, but how did it all begin and who was behind the Frontos park experience?  The Frontos land is at the heart of the family and after their father’s death they decided to invest heavily, investigate blends and produce a quality wine with Canarian grapes. The Canaries is a small region and if they want to make their name in the world wine market the family believe they have to consistently produce wine of a high quality. “We want to make the highest quality of wine possible and we’re on our way,” verified Manuel. He believes that their whites have now reached an excellent level and can compare with the best in Spain and although their red, nationally, has a way to go, it is “the best in Tenerife” and produces a wine, “which without doubt competes on the same level with Ribero de Duero” although he admits it will take a couple of years before they can take on Pesquera (Ribero de Duero’s flagship brand). They decided against using French root stock as the flavour of the grapes and therefore the wine changes depending on the climate, soil, number of daylight hours etc. choosing instead to concentrate on local varieties such as gual, verdello, albillo, marmajuelo and baboso negro. “They are more difficult to grow and have a lower yield, but have been adapting to the local conditions for over 400 years and produce a more aromatic, fruity wine,” asserted Manuel, adding, “the Canaries has more varieties of grape than anywhere else in the world because we mainly escaped the effects of the huge phyloxera plague which hit Europe in the 19th century.” There are currently registered 64 varieties of grapes being grown here. The popular listán blanco is a high yield variety, robust and good as a table grape as well as for wine production, but Manuel affirms, “it doesn’t make a quality wine” They use listán blanco in their ecological wines, but they are grown at a high altitude which gives the grapes more aroma than the normal production. All their wines are made from grapes they either grow themselves or from two fincas of family friends where they closely monitor every stage of production and harvesting. Between 1998 and 2003 they built a new bodega, siting it within the old stone walls of the original, perfectly integrated in the landscape. It’s a bioclimatic construction which is built not only to produce energy but also to use the bare minimum. Look out too for the recycled elements, the bottle sculptures including an unusual and beautiful wall designed and made by Fernando, the telephone posts, train sleepers and an antique church door found discarded in a ravine after renovations. The whole area is also landscaped with a selection of the majority of the autonomous flora of the south of the island. There’s a small playground, a purpose built tasting room, an excellent restaurant and they’ve set up a larger tasting room for big groups in the old bodega, all set in the rolling hills above Los Blanquitos. More than just a vineyard or just another eatery, it’s an experience which is why the family call it Frontos park. All in all one of those out-of-the-way jewels of places that residents love to find and revisit often, taking their friends and visitors to show off their local knowledge a little. From day one when the bodega opened in 2003, they were registered with the local denominación de origen, the Spanish quality control equivalent of the French appelation contrôlée. The following year they opened the restaurant with David Moraga in charge of the kitchens (twice crowned best chef in the Canaries and ex of La Baranda, El Jable and the five star Gran Tacande Hotel). The philosophy is the same top quality combined with good value for money, specialising in Canarian dishes based around whatever is in season. Four of the ten siblings are directly involved in the day to day running of the Frontos park and the rest chip in when necessary with their individual skills and of course it’s all hands on deck during the harvest. Manuel takes care of marketing, distribution and the financial control and Fernando lives on site and is the bodega and farm manager. He explained, “Frontos is made up of the bodega activity and the leisure activity of the restaurant both perfectly integrated. Around these we have created further activities and mini-routes to create a centre to visit where the clients can enjoy all the activities and the surroundings they are set in.” The diversification of the activities on offer is to attract people to go there. Being far off the urban track they realised they had to offer something extra, so the Frontos experience was born, a project that continues to grow and will soon be offering a gentle hike along an old section of the camino real (royal road) which used to be the main transport and travel artery of the area. Along with most other rural restaurants, they have been drastically affected by the lowering of the alcohol limit and the new legislation and levels of punishment for drink-driving offences. By no means in favour of driving under the effect of drink, they do however believe that the current levels are too strict. Manuel complained, “we used to have a level of 0.5 and people could have a couple of glasses of wine and a liqueur like in Germany, now we have to go to Germany to enjoy ourselves”. They are not even considering the option of producing a low-alcohol wine, “that’s not wine” asserted Manuel, adding that it can only be achieved by adding chemicals to artificially reduce the alcohol level which is against the company policy of producing as natural a product as possible. Whilst other producers in the islands have some form of protection against bulk producers from Europe, the wine trade here is not only unprotected but penalised. The lie of the land here means that everything has to be done by hand increasing the labour costs. Larger vineyards on more levelled surfaces can have a higher degree of mechanisation and therefore produce more cheaply, if not to the same quality. The problem is that until recently there have been very few professional wine producers in the Canaries, most bodegas working on a part time basis, but now they have created an association to give them a voice and fight for their interests. To protect local bottle and cardboard makers there is a 15 per cent surcharge on material imported from the Spanish mainland, but if the vineyards here don’t want the quality or designs on offer here they have to buy from there and thus pay 15 per cent more than the other Spanish producers. To protect the local manufacturers they have penalised the bodegas and the new association is now fighting to have this surcharge scrapped. In addition, regions like Rioja, give grants to importers of their wine, even within the same country, making it more competitive, perhaps unfairly so. They would also like to see a 15 per cent charge made on wines imported into the islands as is imposed in Madeira. A key employee is Pablo López Betancor, the oenologist, who has been connected with the project from the very beginning including selecting the varieties to be planted and the equipment to be used. With the exception of the ecological wines, all the production is left for a period of time in the American and French oak barrels and then further matured in the bottle. They even recommend that their Blanco Clasico Barrica 2005 should be allowed to breathe a little, just like a good red wine. They are currently producing around 70,000 bottles a year, the vines are stabilising which will mean an even higher quality and they are continuing to experiment with different agricultural techniques to improve even further. As a nation, Britain is now drinking more wine than beer and in fact drinks more per person than the average Spaniard, but as a wise man once said, “life is too short to drink bad wine”. Frontos ecological wines are on sale at Makro and the rest of the selection can be found at El Corte Inglés and Hipercor or in the cellars of top restaurants such as the Little Italy chain as well as in the tasting room at the bodega itself. Keep an eye out too in the Island Connections media group publications for further open-day tastings. The family were thrilled with the response the last one brought as Fernando told us, “it’s a whole new public for us and they were exactly the kind of people we want to attract, people who enjoy everything we have to offer, the wine, the food, the landscape and the Canarian culture”. You can find Frontos on the TF28 between Los Blanquitos and Chimiche, look out for the Guanche symbol like an upturned rake on the entry sign. By Sheila Collis
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