95 points - "The 2024 Benje Blanco comes from the same plots that produce the red Benje, because they are all field blends, and the whites are picked three weeks earlier than the reds. They don't do flor anymore (since 2023) because of the heat, and it's too risky without sulfur. It has a pale golden color and a mealy nose with some notes of cereals, dry flowers and pollen. It has a serious and stony palate, coming through as a very serious white well above what the price level might suggest. The parameters show the contained but good ripeness, under 12% alcohol, with good balance and freshness, pH 3.02 and 6.9 grams of acidity. There was a step up in 2023, and there's another one in 2024. 18,500 bottles and 150 magnums produced. It was bottled in July 2025.

I tasted the bottled 2024s (and the bottled 2023 Migan) from Tenerife with Roberto Santana from Envínate in the middle of their 2025 harvest. 2024 was dry, similar to 2023, with uneven sprouting because of a warm winter, and they had to do a green harvest to correct that. There weren't any heat waves during the summer or harvest, and the harvest was early but not as early as 2023. It was a small crop for reds but very good—quality and quantity—for whites, all of them put through 100% malolactic. 2024 is the best year for La Santa. In Taganana, the style of the reds resembles 2021 or 2022, and the whites might resemble the style of 2023 but with more freshness.

In Tenerife, they work 18 hectares of the 22.5 hectares they control, and they own around 7.5 hectares, with three to five of them in Taganana. In 2024, they produced close to 80,000 bottles, a little less than in 2023." - Luis Gutiérrez (The Wine Advocate)

Importer's Notes:

The word 'Benje' comes from the language of the indigenous inhabitants of Tenerife who lived on the island prior to it's colonization by the Spanish over four hundred years ago. Benje was their name for the tallest peak on Tenerife, the 3000 plus meter high volcano now known as 'Pico Viejo' (Old Mountain), an eruption a little over a year ago blew the top off Benje, reducing it from the tallest, to the second tallest peak on Tenerife behind the 3700m Pico Teide.

The vineyards that provide fruit for Benje Blanco are in the shadow of the volcano, planted directly into the rubble and scree that remains after an eruption in 1908. The vineyards are well over 1000m above sea level, above the town of Santiago de Teide on the north western side of the island. Unlike the lower zones of Valle de la Orotava or Taganana further to the east, the Benje sites are less subject to the cooling Aliosos trade winds, but the added altitude brings it's own sense of freshness to the wines of this zone. The altitude also means Benje's vines are normally above the cloud cover resulting in much, much drier conditions. Typically this would result in more textured, glyceric wines, closer to the Albillo's of the Sierra de Gredos than the more racy, Galician/Atlantic looking wines from Oratava but the Envinate crews' continual experimentation with flor yeast, something they became accustomed too while consulting to sherry producer Alvear has increasingly resulted in leaner, more graceful wines. As of the 2018 vintage some 60% of Benje Blanco is influenced by flor. The result isn't so much a clear sherry-vibe, this isn't a volcanic Fino or Manzanilla, as much as it is a stripping back of fruit and texture to display more of the underlying minerality, salinity and acid line.