La Geria
Interesting facts
- A photograph of La Geria hung in Bernard Rudofsky's 1964 MoMA exhibition Architecture Without Architects, a show that reinforced César Manrique's fight to protect Lanzarote's rural landscape.
- The eruptions of 1730–1736 left layers of lapilli between one and two and a half metres thick across this part of the island.
- Lanzarote gets only about 100 to 200 mm of rain a year, almost all of it in winter, yet the vines survive without irrigation.
- The coarse cinder blanket lets scarce rain drain quickly to the roots, while its poor capillarity and low heat conduction slow evaporation from the soil below.
- The method proved so effective that lapilli is quarried here and spread as a mulch about 10 cm deep on unburied fields elsewhere, a technique called enarenado artificial.
- Seen from the air, the thousands of semicircular stone walls form a regular pattern that resembles a honeycomb.
- Scattered among the vines are taros, small farmers' huts built from irregular blocks of volcanic stone.
- Fig trees are grown here the same way as the vines, each planted alone at the bottom of its own pit.
- The protected area also includes the Cueva de los Naturalistas, a large natural lava tube, and is designated a special protection area for birds.
- Montaña de Guardilama, 603 metres high, rises over the district, with vineyards climbing almost to the foot of its summit cone.
Why it is worth it
La Geria is a vineyard that should not exist. In the 1730s a long series of eruptions from the Timanfaya fissures, lasting from 1730 to 1736, buried much of the farmland of central and southwestern Lanzarote under lava and a thick blanket of black volcanic grit, the lapilli the islanders call picón or rofe. Instead of abandoning the land, farmers dug down through the ash to the old soil beneath and planted vines at the bottom of the holes. The result, repeated across thousands of hectares, is one of the strangest agricultural landscapes in Europe: a dark, rolling plain pitted with craters, each cradling a single green vine.
Each pit, or hoyo, can be one to two metres deep, and on the windward side most are guarded by a low crescent of dry-stone wall, a zoco, stacked from lava blocks to break the steady trade wind. The volcanic cinders do the rest. They are porous enough to soak up dew and night humidity and hold it against the roots, which allows vines to grow on an island that receives almost no rain. Planting is sparse, only a few hundred vines to the hectare, and the pattern of black hollows, ochre slopes and stone arcs changes with the light, looking almost graphic in low morning or evening sun. The signature grape is Malvasía, made into fragrant white wines.
The protected landscape, declared in 1987, covers about 5,255 hectares across five municipalities: Yaiza, Tías, Tinajo, San Bartolomé and Teguise. To the west it runs up against the Los Volcanes natural park and Timanfaya National Park, so the cultivated craters lie within sight of the raw lava fields that made them. Along the road through the valley a string of bodegas open their cellars and terraces, and the route through the vineyards is best enjoyed slowly, stopping wherever the view opens across the field of hollows.
Getting there
La Geria lies in the centre of Lanzarote, about 6 km from the town of Tías. César Manrique-Lanzarote Airport (ACE) is about 10 km away. The LZ-30 road runs through the heart of the vineyards, and several wineries along it, including El Grifo, receive visitors.
Plan your visit
We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.
Nearby places
- Montañas del Fuego 5.3 km · volcano
- Timanfaya National Park 8.9 km · national-park
- Lanzarote 9.3 km · island
- Charco Verde 12.4 km · lagoon
- Jardín de Cactus 24.8 km · botanical-garden
On these lists
28.97372, -13.70051per Wikidata