Wine Tasting – Volcanic Island Wine

Using some of the best wines available, here, on the UK market, our head sommelier Eric, will show how volcanic island wines echo the past and point towards the future.

Wines from volcanic islands have a story to tell. Being grown on decomposed lava, not only do they display a strong personality and marked mineral character but a purity of style that got lost with the phylloxera devastation of the late 19^th century. Most of them are indeed from vines that remain ungrafted direct producers, for phylloxera cannot thrive in such sandy-like soils. Often introduced to the Atlantic islands during the Age of Discovery on the way to the Indies, those grapes are now considered native to the canary Islands, Madeira or the Azores, for the integrity of their parent vines was compromised in mainland Europe. Santorini in the Cyclades and Pantelleria, a satellite of Sicily off the coast of Tunisia, are home to sweet wines that are still made the way the ancient Greeks and the Phoenicians were making them. Sweet wine was the only wine stable enough to be used as currency in the Mediterranean trade. Similarly,  Madeira and the fortified wines of the Atlantic will come to form the core of the international wine trade. Now that there is a move away from sweet and fortified wines, a new generation of winemakers works hard at keeping those grapes alive and at ensuring that Terroir is expressed in wines that they elaborate with minimum intervention.