Muscat of Alexandria
Gran Canaria's most planted white. Shameless perfume that turns far more interesting than you'd expect once it's made dry.
Muscat of Alexandria is one of the oldest and best-travelled grapes going: Mediterranean to the core, all sun and sea breeze, planted from Málaga to Sicily (where they call it Zibibbo). Almost everyone files it under sweet wine, and fairly so, because it piles up sugar like few others and smells of orange blossom, grape and citrus from across the table.
In the Canaries there’s a twist. On Gran Canaria it’s the most planted white, ahead of vijariego and listán blanco, and a good share of it gets vinified dry. That’s where muscat stops being pudding and turns into something else: the perfume is still there, but with no sugar behind it the whole thing goes bare and sharp, and in a blend it supplies the nose without weighing down the palate. It’s the aromatic signature of half the island and hardly anyone outside knows it.