Among the lava of El Hierro heroic viticulture arises, a characteristic that could also be said of the Herreños for their fight against the elements. The island has the flavor of the only cheeses that are smoked with “tunera”, quesadillas and limpets from a rough sea. Is small (of 30 kilometers from one end to another), steep, high altitude and with the highest density of volcanoes. This island, the youngest of Canary Islands, it has been marked by its isolation and scarcity of water. All this has made it continue to belong to the locals and not to tourists.
The crooked juniper due to the wind, like the one that can be seen in The Sabinar, is the symbol of adaptation of the herreños. In El Hierro until the 70s they had no electricity or roads. But that wind, colliding with its high peaks - the greatest, the Malpaso Peak, which has 1.501 meters - is also the one that produces life in the form of water through the clouds. Formerly all houses had cisterns to collect that water. Today they are still used for irrigation, as well as for livestock: goats, sheep and cows, the animals that inhabit the island.
The water, the wealth obtained
The Herreños suffered a lot of thirst without knowing that they had water on the island until in the 60s they built a gallery. It penetrates a cliff and draws it from an underground aquifer. The Well of the Padrones, in the Valle de la Frontera, is still today the the island's main water supplier, that the visitor can taste in this place. Currently, the desalination plant powered by the wind farm gives tranquility to an island that also wants to be the most sustainable in Spain.
It is said that in the past it was more difficult to have water than wine. In this municipality, on a lava platform, the tropical banana and pineapple greenhouses, fruit of which this island is the largest producer of the Canary Islands. The advance of these crops coincides with the decline of the vineyards. East gulf valley It produced 2 million kilos of grapes a century ago. It is now at an all-time low (around 250.000 kilos). To contemplate the valley of the Gulf and how its walls fall into the sea is el Mirador de la Peña restaurant, designed by César Manrique.
The wines of El Hierro
In this same municipality is the Casa del Aguardiente, which houses the Regulatory Council of the Denomination of Origin Vinos de El Hierro, where information and tastings of these very different wines are offered. Only 5% of the wines of the European Union are, like these, of heroic viticulture (The one carried out at an average altitude of more than 500 meters, with a slope greater than 30% or with the vineyard on terraces).
The large number of hours of sunshine -El Hierro It is the last place in Europe where it is put- it gives the grape an alcoholic vocation. As they are pre-phylloxera (the volcanic soil allowed the phylloxera to not develop) all the vines are planted in open ground. Most are underperforming, with a pickup by hand and an exploitation that does not obey business logic.
El white vijariego is the most typical variety of El Hierro. "Because of its marked acidity, whatever you eat with Vijariego, be it lamb, kid or cheeses, it marks it for you," says Alfredo Hernández, DO technician. tasters ”, he says and gives as an example of originality the mixture of white vijariego with white slime. On the other hand, it warns of the loss of hectares of vineyards: from the 196 hectares that existed in the year 2000, it has been increased to the current 116. The vineyards are in nano-terrains, nanobodegas, smallholdings to the extreme.
Elysar, the award-winning winery
One of the 14 wineries in El Hierro es elysar. With only six years of life his Red Lajiales Herreños won the Silver Bacchus in 2018 and the Great Dry White Malpaso obtained the Silver Bacchus in 2019. Its owner, Ambrosio Martín, started making wine after the crisis took him out of the construction sector. Like vats, it has recycled milk transport tanks. Six types of wines come from here, 20.000 bottles in total, a thousand of them from Baboso. "The Baboso is out of the range of normal flavors", tells us Ambrosio, who makes an "integrated culture", only using sulfur.
Herreña gastronomy
A good place to wash creative dishes with Canarian broths is the restaurant The Deep Look (Santiago, 25), in Valverde (the capital of El Hierro), with specialties such as suckling pig and octopus with potatoes. Another interesting option is, also in the capital, the tafeña (Quintero Ramos, 2), which serves grilled cheese with mojo, pineapple jam and mushroom compote, carpaccio of veal in egg bed and octopus in tempura.
Despite being surrounded by the sea, people in their homes eat meat, and the kidBesides lamb, it is one of the most typical dishes. As well as the meat party (marinated pork) and rabbit. Fish only goes to restaurants. In the main port, La Restinga, the southernmost town in Europe and a diving paradise, did not start fishing until the 70s.
The tradition was brought there by a Gomeran family, and most of the fishing goes to Tenerife. Those who fish at the family level catch old women, bream, moray eels and many limpets, very typical of El Hierro. In the restaurant The shelter (La Lapa, 2) of La Restinga, you can taste local fish such as viejas, alfonsiños, sargos or moray eel. In addition to shrimp and limpets as a starter. Everything always accompanied by mojo, the typical Canarian sauce, like the wrinkled potatoes. The business is family owned: Juan Miguel is the one who fishes and his brother Juan Manuel who runs the restaurant, open since 1988.
Cod, Portuguese tradition
Near La Llanía, Goyo House (Jarera, 22), in San Andrés, the highest town on the island, offers one of the typical dishes of El Hierro, cod with onions, arrived from abroad through the first settlers of the Peninsula and Portugal. More farmers and ranchers than fishermen, with crops of cereals and potatoes, the Herreños always had a subsistence diet. As the cheese broth, made from cheese, potatoes, egg, onion, tomato, garlic, coriander, salt and oil.
Herreño cheese
From his majorera goat, native to Fuerteventura, arises the herreño cheese, present in the menu of all grilled restaurants. It has always been a mixed cheese, with 70% goat's milk. The one most consumed on the island is smoked, which is created in a unique way in the islands, with the "tunera" (the prickly pear leaf). Alejandra Hernández, manager of the Central Cheese Factory of the Cooperative Society of Cattlemen of El Hierro explains it to us: “In other places it is industrialized and there is a smoky aroma. Here it is all natural ”.
Part of the mixture that is used to make the cheese goes to the quesadillas, the typical sweet of El Hierro. The Adrián Gutiérrez e Hijos (Veintidós de Febrero, 2) factory, in Valverde, is the oldest on the island. They have been making quesadillas since 1900. The great-grandfather of Isabel Morales began, who today runs the business and gives us the recipe: “The fundamental ingredient is cheese, goat, cow and sheep, to which is added wheat flour, egg, sugar, lemon, anise and cinnamon. It is kneaded and the puff pastry is made ”. Then it is put in a furnace with heather wood.
Due to its rough sea, To bathe on the island, you have to go to some of its natural pools such as Tacorón, near La Restinga. There is also the Charco Azul, La Maceta, the Pozo de Las Calcosas or Tamaduste. The island has only one lighthouse, Orchilla, which was the end of the world before the discovery of America and is still the first lighthouse to be seen in Europe.
El Hierro, contrast of landscapes
In El Hierro, a Biosphere Reserve since 2000, a continuous contrast of landscapes is experienced in a very short distance. The paths on which the Herreños used to travel before the existence of the roads are today hiking trails with a network of 270 kilometers marked.
One of the most typical excursions is the crossing of La Llanía, where the visitor enters a fairytale laurel forest in which, due to the climate, the heather rises up to 14 meters. They grow from 600 meters, altitude at which the cloud begins to form, the famous donkey belly, which causes horizontal rain.
With the hiking tourism agency atlantis You can do this or other excursions, such as crossing Canarian pine forests in the Hoya del Morcillo. Also walk along vineyards to the north to Echedo, the oldest viticulture area on the island.
Wherever you are on the Canary Island of El HierroYou will always be seeing at least one crater (there are half a thousand) or mountain, as the settlers used to say when they did not know that they were actually volcanoes and the Herreños continue to call them that. We invite you to discover this scandal island destination.
