The camel harvest returns to La Geria this weekend

La Geria celebrates its traditional grape harvest on Friday 14 and Saturday 15 August, as part of the Fiestas de La Caridad. Events are split between Bodegas Rubicón and Bodega La Geria, and Yaiza council invites residents and visitors alike.

The programme opens Friday at 20:00 at Bodegas Rubicón, with the Sondemar and Janubio folk bands accompanying the enyesque: wine and local food shared standing up, the Canarian way of starting a celebration.

The next day brings what everyone comes for: the harvest with camels, the animals carrying grapes gathered from the hoyos, the hollows dug into volcanic ash that shelter each vine from the wind. Then the barefoot pressing and mass.

Unlike any other harvest

There are no rows in La Geria. Each plant stands alone in its pit, ringed by a crescent of dry stone, on ground that does not hold rain but traps the moisture of the night. It is a farming system born after the eruptions of the 1730s and impossible to copy elsewhere — which is why picking is still done by hand and, sometimes, still with camels.

Sources: Bodegas Rubicón; Bodega La Geria; Cabildo de Lanzarote.