“But, i' faith, you have drunk too much canaries, and that’s a marvellous searching wine, and it perfumes the blood” –Shakespeare, Henry IV

El Hierro is the smallest and wildest of the Canary Islands, a landscape of dark volcanic stone rising in chiseled crags from the Atlantic. Only 167 hectares of vines exist here, yet the island holds the greatest genetic diversity of grapes in the chain. It also runs entirely on renewable energy. These conditions convinced Rayco Fernández that El Hierro had the brightest future of all the islands.

Bimbache is the winery he created in 2018, starting with 5 hectares spread across Valverde, Frontera, and El Pinar. The vines grow in terraces hewn into black volcanic walls and hoyos, small craters dug into rocky soil, ringed by lava-stone walls to shield against the trade winds. The vines are old and farmed organically. Harvests are manual, fermentations spontaneous, and the only temperature control is the winery's orientation to catch the wind that almost never stops.

La Raya takes its name from the imaginary line of the Prime Meridian, which for centuries passed through the western tip of El Hierro at Punta de Orchilla, the edge of the European “known world.” The wine is a late, ripe selection of verijadiego blanco and listán blanco from the historic Finca John Stone, with small amounts of gual, baboso blanco, and forastera blanca. After a gentle whole-cluster pressing and spontaneous fermentation, it ages under flor, developing notes of almond, curry leaf, fennel frond, and a pronounced salinity. Around 500 bottles produced.