Borja Perez

Borja Pérez González is a fourth-generation winemaker whose family has made wine in La Guancha, on the northwest slope of Tenerife, since 1927. He grew up in the family winery, finished an agricultural engineering degree in 2007 and worked with his father and uncle while moonlighting as a firefighter and racing-car mechanic. In 2011 he took the reins (Ungrafted Selections says he bought the winery from his father and uncle, Justerinis that he inherited it), renamed it Ignios Orígenes and reset the direction: indigenous Canarian grapes, tighter vineyard work, a lower-intervention cellar. Both lines now sit under the umbrella Borja Pérez Viticultor.

The estate is small and the counts vary by source and date: Spanish Wine Lover gives 5.5 ha owned plus 2 rented, Vinissimus about 6 ha owned plus leased plots, and Bowler's older sheet 7 ha owned plus 4 ha worked from six growers. The key parcels are La Vizcondesa (over 1.5 ha at 450 m, clay-loam in the Spanish original, clay-limestone in the English translation, planted in 1998 with Baboso Negro and Marmajuelo), a roughly 40-year-old ungrafted Listán vineyard at Buenavista Norte that Borja has worked since 2012, and Casa Canales at 770 m on sandy loam with coarse stones. Farming is organic; Borja calls it sustainable with the empirical side of biodynamics and says he will treat the vines if they need it. The grape portfolio is stubbornly Canarian: reds Listán Negro, Baboso Negro and Vijariego Negro; whites Listán Blanco, Albillo Criollo, Gual and the rare Marmajuelo. Ungrafted vines, volcanic soils, Atlantic trade winds.

Two lines. Ignios Orígenes is the single-vineyard, single-variety range from his own vines, in tiny volumes: Baboso Negro (1,300 bottles), Listán Negro (1,500), Vijariego Negro (2,500), Marmajuelo (2,100, not made since 2019 after successive dry years, with a return expected for 2025) and, from 2022, a few hundred bottles of Albillo Criollo. Artífice is the line he launched in 2014 or 2015 (the importers differ) from mostly bought-in grapes grown by local growers with small old parcels, an homage to his winegrower grandfather and to those growers; the clasped hands on the label are the grandfather's per Ungrafted Selections and the great-grandfather's per Bowler. It runs to Listán Blanco (about 8,000 bottles), Tinto (about 10,000), Vidueños (a white blend of Marmajuelo, Gual, Albillo Criollo and Listán Blanco from ten plots), Llanito Perera (two plots on one site in Icod de los Vinos, Listán Blanco), Ventura (from 2023, a 60/40 Listán Blanco and Listán Negro from one vineyard), a rosado and the numbered Impares releases.

In the cellar: native yeasts, each plot vinified separately in steel, concrete or wood, ageing in foudre or used barrels, nothing added except sulphur before bottling, no temperature control, no stabilisation, no fining. On clarification the importers disagree with each other: Ungrafted's producer page says nothing beyond natural settling, its Listán Blanco sheet says lightly filtered, and Bowler says the Tinto is lightly clarified but not filtered. Part of the broader Canary natural-wine cohort alongside Envínate and Victoria Torres Pecis, though Borja's family roots in La Guancha go back further than most.