Ungrafted. Phylloxera never reached La Palma, and practically every vine on the island still grows on its own roots; many of the Malvasía vines are more than a hundred years old. In the south the black picón lies up to five metres deep, and growers dig stepped holes through the ash until they reach the old soil underneath. Trained as a rastra, a single vine can trail along the ground for 36 metres. Besides Malvasía the island grows Albillo Criollo, Negramoll, Sabro and Gual, and in the north Listán Prieto, which is genetically the same grape as Mission in California and País in Chile.
Tea. In Garafía, Puntagorda and Tijarafe in the north, wine is still kept in barrels of tea, the resin-rich heartwood of the Canary pine. Vino de Tea may spend at most six months in this wood, which gives it a resinous, mentholated taste, and in 2019 the DO bottled 4,700 litres of it. No new barrels can be built, because the pine is protected and the last coopers have died. When researchers from the CSIC made an inventory in 2021, they counted 190 pipas belonging to 78 owners, most of them at least a hundred years old, of which 26 were still in use.
Lava. The Tajogaite eruption on the Cumbre Vieja began on 19 September 2021 and lasted 85 days, until 13 December. Lava and ash covered 36 hectares of DO vineyard in El Paso and Los Llanos, belonging to about a hundred growers, and the lava buried many of the small family bodeguitas where wine was made and kept. In 2000 the DO had 1,050 hectares of registered vineyard; this year it counts 441, worked by 778 growers.