The El Grifo Wineries of Lanzarote have been in the Canary Islands the longest, producing wine uninterruptedly, and are also among the ten oldest in Spain.
This year they celebrate two and a half centuries of history, a history they share with Ekonomus, one of their owners, Juan José Otamendi.
“We consider the venerable Don Antonio, parish priest of the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the main church of Lanzarote, to be the founder of El Grifo, although his father already made wine in the El Grifo area, which was then a place,” explains Otamendi.
“He was buying land in the area and built the covered winery in 1775, although we didn't know that until about 15 years ago, when a stone was discovered that said 'Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Grifo, 1775' and we were able to specify the date on which the covered winery was built.
Only a handful of decades had passed since the last eruptions of Timanfaya, which would give rise to La Geria as we know it and the development of wine cultivation in Lanzarote.
Otamendi shares that there are no documents that attest to the production of wine in Lanzarote prior to this, although there are for grapes and raisins, while there are for Fuerteventura.
In the neighboring island, “wine was produced by the Normans around 1450”, in the lands known as the Viña de Anibal, which would later become the property of the Marquis of Lanzarote, who then also had jurisdiction over Fuerteventura.
Returning to El Grifo, Otamendi says that, upon the death of the founding parish priest of the wineries, the property, the winery passed to his nephew and then to the Castro family, who owned it for three generations until “in 1880 they sold it to my maternal great-grandfather.”
El Grifo wine and the world of culture
Bodegas El Grifo has received visits from numerous illustrious figures. From politics, Otamendi confirms the presence of several ministers and from culture, José Hierro, José Saramago and César Manrique have played a particularly relevant role.
The poet José Hierro, awarded with the Cervantes and the national literature prize, “inaugurated the thematic library that we have about Lanzarote, wine and viticulture. He liked wine quite a bit, although it was contraindicated for him,” shares Otamendi.
For his part, Nobel Prize winner José Saramago, who resided in Lanzarote, also had a special relationship with El Grifo. He sponsored the library and also wrote the prologue for a book by Juan José Otamendi himself,