95 points - "The southern red 2024 Benje is mostly Listán Prieto (a.k.a. País) from the Santiago del Teide zone of Tenerife, with some 9% Listán Blanco and maybe 1% Tintilla. It has a textbook nose of wet basalt, dry rose petals, black pepper and gunpowder. It has a medium-bodied and fine palate, with more freshness and hyper fine tannins. This has to be one of the best values from the whole of Spain, and this is one of the finest vintages. It comes in at 12.5% alcohol, with a pH of 3.36 and 6.2 grams of acidity. They have reduced the whole clusters and aged exclusively in neutral 225-liter barrels. 14,500 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.

Viticulture in this area was introduced by the Spanish, not the Portuguese as it was in Taganana, meaning there's not the confusing array of varietals but simply, very old head pruned Listan Prieto vines. Originally from continental Spain, Listan Prieto was brought to the Canaries during the Spanish colonization of South America, where the grape went onto become a mainstay of South American wine industry under the name Pais, before being brought north again, to California where it survives under the alias Mission. Of late this well travelled cultivar has fallen out of favour, in the era (or error?) Parker-led tastes and modern winemaking due to it's relatively light colour, low tannin, lower levels of alcohol and a penchant for growing grapes with high natural acidity. All things that make it immediately appealing to the Envinate team...