Artífice Listán Blanco

The 2019 Artífice Listán Blanco is produced with Palomino grapes (called Listán Blanco in the Canary Islands) from seven old vineyards. It fermented with indigenous yeasts and matured in a 3,000-liter oak foudre and in two used 500-liter oak barrels, where it matured for 11 months. It's low in alcohol and has good freshness. There is a pungent note on the nose, common to most of the whites here, a mixture of orange blossom and cloves, floral and balsamic. Pérez works quite reductively and with plenty of gross lees. The palate has pungent flavors and a velvety texture and comes through as elegant and complex. There is a little bit of change in this wine because of the year. 5,000 bottles were produced. It was bottled in January 2021.

Intense, smoked-rocks and samphire-in-rock-pool nose. Tastes like lemon chiselled out of a salt pan, like a cold mountain stream stained brown by bracken, like bleached sandy shells caught in kelp, like a white peach picked three days too early. It glitters, in the mouth. It's brine and salt spray crashing against cliffs. The Vin Cognito notes mentioned bacon fat. Tasting this cold out the fridge, I wrinkled my nose and thought, 'nonsense: too angular, too lemon, too mineral'. But then, a couple of hours later, after my glass had been sitting on the garden table warming in the sunlight, I took a sip and almost dropped the glass in shock. Yes! Lardo! Almost pork-scratching-like! Amazing, but yes, they're right. Bacon fat. Tempting as it is to drink a wine like this very cold, it became far more interesting at >14 °C. Food pairing? I'd wrap scallops in lardo, flash fry them in a pan or pop them on a searingly hot barbecue for a minute or two, squeeze a fresh lemon over them, and kick back.