Canary Islands Day 1: Exploring Vineyards in Volcanoes on Lanzarote

Lanzarote is a lonely-looking landscape. Grey ashy volcanic soil stretches for miles along the roads outside Arrecife, its capital city. Hilly mounds rise up like pyramids, a backdrop to the unforgiving land. It’s a bleak environment, brightened only by houses that are painted the required shade of white.

The northernmost and easternmost of Spain’s seven main Canary Islands, Lanzarote owes this ash-tinted atmosphere to its volcanic origins. The most constant flow of eruptions occurred between 1730 and 1736, and the volcano is still active today.  It’s the kind of place where you can’t imagine anything being able to grow.

And yet, wine is produced here.

The Wine Tour that Kind of Wasn’t

I was eager to explore these volcanic vineyards and booked a private wine tasting tour for Herb and me. Unfortunately, the tour didn’t turn out quite the way we’d hoped. In fact, it was a huge disappointment. To be fair, we were promised a chance to walk in the fields, which we did. We were promised tastings at three wineries, which we had. And we were promised an English-speaking guide, which we were given – sort of.

At first, the woman who picked us up at the port seemed friendly. She was a surfer who had left Madrid for Lanzarote years ago and never moved back. But as she drove, she didn’t say much and seemed to ignore our questions. Her English was quite difficult to understand, and we thought maybe she didn’t know what we were asking.

Bodega Vulcano

Our first wine tasting was at a boutique winery in town called Bodega Vulcano. We were the only visitors and sat at a table with our guide, who gave a canned-sounding speech without looking at us, as if her remarks were written somewhere in the air. We sampled three wines – two whites and one red – that were very different from anything we’d tasted. “Ashy” and “smokey” were the words that came to mind.

Although we weren’t sure what to make of the taste, we were both taken with the wine bottles. From what we could tell from our guide’s remarks, Lanzarote wine makers pride themselves on creating beautiful and unique bottles, trying to outdo one another. Bodega Vulcano’s bottles were elegant and different from anything we’d seen. We thought about bringing one home, but it was unusually heavy. I also wanted to try wines from the other vineyards before committing to purchasing anything.

Views From My Window

Next we headed into the volcanic countryside where the grapes are grown. The scenes outside my window looked like a foreign planet from a science fiction movie. Our guide drove fast, darting around curves as if the destination were far more pressing than the strange-looking landscape of our journey. When I asked a question, her response was as bizarre as the scenery: “I’m surprised you don’t know Spanish since you’re from the U.S.”

Bodega La Geria

We pulled into the parking lot at Bodega La Geria and made our way down a flight of old stone steps onto the ashy carpet of a volcanic field. It was a surreal sight of stone circles, scruffy brush, a distant volcano and one palm tree.

As our guide gave her monologue to the air, Herb and I took in the scene. A hot wind was blowing through the ashy soil, and I could only imagine how difficult it must be to work in these fields. I can’t tell you how or when or even why the wine-growing business began here, but somehow farmers figured out that vines would flourish when planted into the fertile soil that was buried beneath the lava and volcanic ash. They placed semi-circles of stones around the vines to protect them from the wind – even as the flat ground began to reach the volcanic hills.

Bodega La Geria’s large tasting room seemed to be a popular spot for groups. While we were there, a tour from our ship and a group from another ship stopped in for a tasting. Herb and I tried three wines, all of which seemed inferior to those from our previous stop. I had hoped to bring home a Canary Island wine for our family’s Thanksgiving dinner and asked our guide if we could return to Bodega Volcano on our way back to the ship to purchase a bottle. “No,” she told me firmly. “They opened just for our tasting. It’s Saturday, and most of the wineries in Lazarote are closed. Only this place and the other large winery across the road are open.”

I wanted to ask her why she didn’t tell us that when we were at Bodega Volcano, but there really was no point. The tour had gone down the proverbial hill and now had fallen off the cliff. Her apathy was so palpable that I couldn’t wait to leave.

Bodegas Rubicon

Herb and I walked across the road to the third and final stop of the day. The three-hundred-year-old Bodegas Rubicon lays claim to being  the oldest winery on Lanzarote and seemed even busier than its neighbor. Our guide met us at the tasting room bar and told us we could pick three of the seven bottles on display to try. We had no idea what to select, and with no recommendation or help from our guide, it didn’t seem to matter.

After the tasting, we spent some time outside, looking at the vineyards and still trying to wrap our heads around this most unusual way of producing wine. Despite having a guide who seemed to have checked out before she even started, it was an interesting experience. I can’t say that I’d want to return to Lanzarote, but I was glad to have gained even a speck of perspective of a place so different from other parts of the world where wine is grown.

A Footnote

Not surprisingly, it was a quiet ride back to the ship. And even less surprisingly, our guide dropped us off thirty minutes before the tour was supposed to end. On the way, I tried one last time to engage our guide, asking about some quirky-looking chimneys that passed by my window. “Yes, chimneys,” was her response.

Back in our cabin, we looked up TripAdvisor reviews for the tour company I’d booked, convinced that I must have hired a different company.  No, it was the right tour…All five-star reviews, just as I’d remembered. But as Herb began combing through the reviews, he may have found the reason for our disappointing experience. “There are two names who keep coming up as fantastic guides,” he said. “And our guide isn’t one of them.”

And that’s when the lightbulb went off, and I realized I had just learned travel lesson number five-thousand-and-one:

When you book a tour with a company, don’t just book the company, book a specific guide.

I wish I’d known this when I oh-so confidently booked the wine tour in Lanzarote. I could have chosen someone the same way I do when booking a guide who runs his or her own business independently. And even if that person weren’t available, I could have made sure the guide we hired was enthusiastic, energetic and engaging – qualities we highly value.

It was another lesson to add to that endless list of experiences. And as frustrating as it is in the moment, it’s the way it should be when we put ourselves out there to see the world. The truth is, we’ll never stop learning travel lessons until we stop traveling.