Area guide: Tinajo and the north

Four wineries you can visit, a north that has yet to confirm anything, and bookings settled with a phone.

Eleven wineries and wine shops between Tinajo and Haría, and only three have a website that tells you anything: the rest live on Instagram, on a phone number or on a page that says nothing. The Lanzarote wine route is nearly always told from La Geria, and it makes sense: that is the part with the signposts, the car parks and the visits that show up in every guide. Tinajo and the north are the other map.

The landscape runs the show in this area. Out of Mancha Blanca starts the Parque Natural de Los Volcanes, a malpaís of lava climbing to Caldera Blanca, and the vines appear when they appear, each in its hoyo, behind its stone wall. There is no signposted wine road and no row of wineries: you find the houses with the map in front of you and a bit of patience.

The four you can visit

All four sit in the municipality of Tinajo, and for three of them a message or a call is enough. The fourth opens its door on weekdays.

The easy door is Casa del Vino Canario, next to the Monumento al Campesino, César Manrique's work on the road that links Arrecife with Tinajo. It opens on weekday mornings, keeps a shop with wines from every island, gift boxes and accessories with wine as the excuse, and the sommelier Vicenta Mira programmes the tastings and workshops you book on the house's website. Lunch is sorted too: inside the same museum grounds there is a restaurant, open until 16:00.

In La Vegueta sits Bodega Las Cadenas, which announces guided visits on its Instagram profile and slots them in by phone. It is the house with the longest opening hours in the area, and it leaves the stop easy any day but Sunday.

The most curious of the four stands in Tinajo itself. Lanzarote Natural presents itself as the smallest winery on the island, and its plan is a tasting with enyesque, which here means tapas: two glasses of D.O. Lanzarote wine per person, prickly pear juice and a table of the house's produce, for 55 € in the Gourmet version and 75 € in the Premium, which adds local cheese, volcanic flor de sal and chocolate. It lasts about an hour, you book it over WhatsApp and they confirm the exact time on the same chat. The visit climbs up the mountain and past the new vineyard, and if the sky plays along, the Archipiélago Chinijo appears on the horizon. The shop, separately, sells aloe vera, mojos and gofio, so you go home with more than a bottle.

Bodega Cohombrillo completes the four, down the track of the camino de las Quemadas that leaves La Vegueta towards the park. The wine is natural, from one plot, with its own harvest on an organic estate, as the house presents itself, and it has no website: it has an Instagram account where the 2023, 2024 and 2025 harvests get top billing, and a WhatsApp that works as reception. Wine tourism runs on reservation only, so the message goes out before the car.

The other three in Tinajo, visits unconfirmed

Three houses remain in the municipality, and none has said whether it receives visitors. Each one explains it in its own way.

Bodegas Tisalaya occupies calle Tajaste, in Tinajo, and is the family project of Miguel Morales Morín, with two plots that, according to the house, fall inside the Parque Nacional de Timanfaya and the Parque Natural de Los Volcanes. Its website has a shop, and there they make much of a dry white without a drop of malvasía, only diego from old vines. The two from La Vegueta complete the house: a white with diego and malvasía volcánica, and a red from thirty-year-old listán negro. What they nowhere mention is whether they show people round, so the sensible thing is to call 638 95 07 00.

Entre Latidos G63 hides away on the camino de las Huertitas, at the foot of the volcán Tamia so they tell it, and makes reds for the cellar, aged in French oak. The website is a two-sentence card and no phone is in sight: the search starts and ends on Instagram.

And Finca Fajardo, in La Vegueta, is the extreme case: it appears in the Designation of Origin register and little else, with no digital trace. It exists, it is on the island's official wine map, and finding out what it does will take knocking on the real door.

The north: four names and not one confirmed visit

In Haría the chapter reads in a paragraph, because that is all there is. Bodega Erupción, next to Tao, has its own page, but the page does nothing except ask you to confirm your age, so to find out what they make you have to call 669 06 54 45. The wine shop Bodega Los Almacenes is in the village of Haría, opens all seven days of the week and has a public phone, 636 65 42 39, although its Facebook page does not open and no other trace of it survives on the internet. Of Aganada and Bodega Goiro, all that can be said today is where they stand: in Haría and on calle Cruz de Ferrer, with nothing more to tell.

The weekend, just in case

The calendar is the trap here. Casa del Vino Canario closes on Saturdays and Sundays, Lanzarote Natural rests from Friday to Sunday and Las Cadenas does not open on Sundays. For Saturday you are left with Las Cadenas, in La Vegueta, and Los Almacenes. For Sunday, of the eleven houses only Los Almacenes publishes hours, from 10:00 to 18:00: the rest depends on a message someone answers.

If guaranteed tastings and a big house are what you are after, you will be better off at La Geria. If you want your wine on a family scale, there are four doors here, and almost all of them open the same way: with a message or a call. The north, for now, is for taking the map along and leaving the hurry behind.

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