Moscatel in Lanzarote: the grape of the island's sweet wines

Nine wineries work it, and almost everything they say about it ends up as sweet wine. At El Grifo, pergola vines from the 19th century still stand.

It is the glass that arrives at the end of the meal: moscatel is the grape behind Lanzarote's sweet wines. Malvasía volcánica takes the fame and the work of twenty houses, yet moscatel holds a place no other grape can fill. The wineries treat it as a speciality of its own, not as a variety they pass through.

From Alexandria, with old names

When the wineries name the variety, one name dominates: Moscatel de Alejandría. Stratvs and Vulcano use it on their technical sheets, and so does El Grifo for its orange moscatel. Los Bermejos, in San Bartolomé, spells out the exact mix in its vineyards:

Mostly Alejandría or Romano, though there is also some Grano Menudo or Morisco. Los Bermejos, on the winery's website

No other house on the island mentions those two grapes.

Age, here, points in one exact direction. At El Grifo, at kilometre 11 of the LZ-30, there are moscatel pergola vines from the 19th century. For its orange moscatel, the winery also works with pre-phylloxera vines between 100 and 150 years old, that is, vines born before the plague that wiped out Europe's vineyards.

The sweet, the semi-sweet and the orange

The heart of Lanzarote's moscatel is in the sweet wines, and each winery tells it its own way. Stratvs makes its own through over-ripening of the grapes and a 48-hour cold maceration, a method the winery presents as natural. Vulcano goes for the Dolce, 100 % Moscatel de Alejandría, amber in colour according to its technical sheet and served at 8 degrees or at room temperature. The award fits the same picture: on its website the winery celebrates a Bacchus de Oro that the wine won in 2020. Bodega La Geria sells its sweet moscatel in 50 cl bottles at 16 € in the online shop, and it also keeps a limited edition, the Antigua Moscatel Dulce, at 23 €, listed on the same storefront as out of stock. Among the moscatels, the highest published price belongs to El Grifo: its Moscatel de Ana, in its line of historic sweet wines, sells for 58,70 €. And there is a story behind the name: the winery dedicates a text to Ana Brito, the woman who, by the winery's own account, inspires the wine.

Not everything is sugar. Stratvs makes a semi-sweet of moscatel and Malvasía volcánica that the winery presents as a fresh, very aromatic white. Vulcano splits its semi-sweet the other way round: 90 % Malvasía volcánica and 10 % Moscatel de Alejandría, also marked at 8 degrees. In these wines moscatel accompanies rather than leads. El Grifo, for its part, takes a different line: its Moscatel Orange Wine 2021 is described as a white wine with the character of a red. It is the style the wine world calls orange, fermented on the skins like a red.

On taste, what is published is thin: each winery gives its own account, and the rest you can only check in the glass.

The wineries that work it

Moscatel spreads across three fronts. Almost half the wineries are in the La Geria area, lined up along the road of the same name, where the vineyard grows in hollows of ash and the low walls break a trade wind that never lets up. There you find Bodegas Rubicón, Bodega La Geria and Stratvs together, and one step away, in Uga, sits Winelanz, a wine shop before it is a winery. Vulcano makes its wines in Puerto del Carmen. In the Teguise area there are three addresses: El Grifo's winery, its wine bar in the village of San Bartolomé and Bodega Los Bermejos. El Grifo and its wine bar are the same house with two doors and two opening hours, the winery right on the LZ-30 and the bar in the village.

And two sit outside the classic wine circuit. Guiguan is in Tajaste. La Florida, in El Islote, runs guided visits through its vineyards, the Jameo Volcánico and its natural gardens, with a wine tasting and a board of Canarian cheeses. Bookings go by email to [email protected], the visits run in the mornings from Monday to Friday, and the format is for special groups.

Seven wineries confirm visits and two are not confirmed, Los Bermejos and Guiguan, so if the plan includes going in, it is worth calling first: Los Bermejos on 928 52 24 63 and Guiguan on 659 97 15 55.

The opening hours thin the list if the visit falls at the weekend. El Grifo and its wine bar open Monday to Friday only, and Vulcano tightens further: mornings from Monday to Friday only, from 10:00 to 14:00. So the award-winning Dolce gets tasted or bought on a weekday morning.

If moscatel is your thing

If sweet wine is just one chapter of the trip, walking into Bodegas Rubicón, Stratvs or Bodega La Geria is enough. All three open seven days a week, and moscatel shows up in all three. If sweet wine is the reason for the trip, the circuit changes: a weekday morning at Vulcano, the house behind the award-winning Dolce, and El Grifo in full, with its old pergola vines and the shop where the moscatel range runs up to the Moscatel de Ana. And if you travel at the weekend with a bottle in mind, the 50 cl bottles from Bodega La Geria fit in any suitcase. The winery also opens on Sundays, from 11:00 to 19:00.

On an island where the vineyard is born from ash, moscatel is the part that ends in amber.

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