La Geria Wine Region

Every vine at La Geria lives in its own hole. The pits are 4–5 m across and 2–3 m deep, enough to hide a standing adult, and each has a low wall of stacked stone around its rim. Seen from the road, they pock the black slopes one after another, a single vine at the bottom of each.

Nothing here is decoration. The pit reaches down to soil under the ash, the wall breaks the wind, and the hollow gathers what little rain falls and the dew that forms overnight. The ash came from the eruptions of 1730–1736, which buried the most fertile land on the island. The growers dug back down through it.

• Two free car parks and free toilets sit close together.
• There is no drinking water nearby: fill up before you come.
• The ground between the pits is bare black ash with no shade. Bring a hat.
• Walkers' signposts stand about 200 m away, so the vineyards can be explored on foot as well as from the car.

A car is the straightforward way in. Two free car parks lie close together, one of them unpaved, with free toilets beside them, and the pits start from there. Walkers' signposts stand about 160–200 m away for anyone who wants to go further among the vines on foot.

The nearest bus stop, La Asomada Centro, is about 2.3 km away in a straight line, which turns a bus trip into a long walk across open, shadeless ground.

Best: early morning or late afternoon, from spring to the end of summer. Low sun throws shadow into the pits and picks out every wall, and the vines are in leaf through the warm months.

Avoid: midday in summer, and days when the sirocco blows. The black ash soaks up the heat with no shade anywhere between the pits, and the hot sirocco wind fills the air with dust that blurs the view across the slopes.

La Geria is a protected area, and the pits are working vineyards. Keep to the roads and tracks, stay out of the pits and off the stone walls: each wall is stacked by hand, and a dislodged stone opens a gap in the wind break. Leave the grapes and leaves on the vines.