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1984-2016
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July 7 – July 20, 2016 July fiestas
Glastonbury
Going out guide
Out there
Puerto’s celebrations
Down on the farm again
Tenerife’s coolest nightspots
Vine and pine combine
Page 8
Pages 10 & 11
Pages 13, 14 & 15
Page 19
Diving for wine
A nice drop in the ocean Ocean and land are currently combining to help produce extra special Canarian wines. The company Bodega Submarina de Canarias (Canarian Submarine Wine Cellar), based in the south of Tenerife, launched the Islands’ first complete underwater wine storage system a year ago, and their first tasting event took place recently at the Casa del Vino in El Sauzal with great success. Owner, Roberto González Gil, killed two birds with one stone when he set up the business – providing the Islands with one of the world’s largest underwater systems of its kind, catering for wine producers and connoisseurs alike, as well as installing a new tourist attraction in the south of the island.
Ingenious inception During the financial crisis, Roberto went through a tough period. He lost his job as a certified diver, and as a father to two small children was forced to take any work he could find
already signed deals with prestigious labels such as Ferrera, Acevedo, Reverón, Cumbres de Abona, Presas Ocampo, and Prodiflora, who can dunk their wines into underwater cellars for between three months and a year. Not only that, he has now joined an elite sector – there are only a handful of installations like this around the world, including those in Chile, France and the Basque region of Northern Spain.
What is an underwater wine cellar?
A very unusual idea has taken shape on the seabed - the Islands’ first underwater bodega, and the biggest in Europe
just to get by. Then one day while listening to the radio he heard about an underwater wine cellar in Chile. “The idea excited me immediately”,
he said. “I was hooked and couldn’t let go. I made enquiries and registered for the necessary licences, etc. A few private investors became inter-
ested and after three years we were open for business”. The bodega has a capacity of up to 5,000 bottles and González has
The so named ‘Bodega Submarina’ matures wine on the seabed at a depth of 18m, around 200m from the coast of San Miguel de Abona. The bottles are encased in a specially designed structure where new wines remain for around three months and Crianza wines up to half a year.
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