Juan Francisco Fariña
JuanFra, the Valle de Güímar grower behind the Los Loros project.
Juan Francisco Fariña, JuanFra to nearly everyone, is one of those growers who’ve been quietly making wine in the Valle de Güímar since the early 2000s. His project is called Los Loros, after the laurels that grow in the upper reaches of the valley, and he works organically with a few biodynamic touches.
His vines are the hard kind: ungrafted, century-old Listán Blanco in high plots you can only reach with a kitted-out tractor, and that yield next to nothing. Out of that he draws whites unlike anything else, La Bota de Mateo among them, aged inside an old manzanilla cask. When a critic like Tim Atkin hands it top marks, it’s no fluke.