La Matanza de Acentejo

The road from Tenerife North airport climbs 425 m in twenty minutes, then drops you on a ridge where banana plantations tilt seaward and the air smells of musty vines and salt. This is La Matanza de Acentejo, a scatter of houses, smallholdings and black-chapelled plazas that has watched the ocean since 1494, when Guanche warriors chased the Spanish back down the slope and the place earned its bloody name.

Today the only battle is deciding which bodega to enter first. Family cellars line the lane behind the church, their doors propped open with five-litre water bottles and hand-painted signs: “Cata de vinos. Tome una copa.” Inside, the room is barely wider than a Cornish terrace kitchen; the owner pours Listán negro into miniature tumblers and explains, in slow Castilian peppered with school English, why the grape likes the morning cloud. A tasting costs three euros, the price of a pint in a London Wetherspoon’s, and you leave with purple lips and the distinct feeling that you have intruded on someone’s Sunday afternoon.

Ridge walks and cloud etiquette

The municipality measures only 14 km² yet contains three deep barrancos, so every stroll either ends in a calf-burning climb or a vertiginous mirador. The easiest route starts beside the football pitch, descends past allotments of kale and potatoes, then skirts a cliff to the Mirador de San Antonio. On clear days – and they are never guaranteed – you see the whole north coast: Puerto de la Cruz toy-sized, Mount Teide floating above a cotton-wool layer, and the Atlantic bruise-blue to the horizon. Five minutes later the cloud can roll in like a damp duvet, wiping the view and replacing it with dripping cactus and the smell of wet earth. Locals call the phenomenon panza de burro, the donkey’s belly, and regard it with the same resigned affection the British reserve for drizzle.

Paths are short but steep; allow an hour for the circuit, two if you stop to photograph every dragon-tree. Boots with grip are advisable even in summer: the basalt gravel behaves like marbles under a city trainer.

Saturday cheese and other edible truths

Market day is Saturday, 08:00-14:00, in the square outside the sixteenth-century church. Stallholders arrive in battered Renault Clios, boots still warm from the drive down the valley. They sell what their gardens produced yesterday: bunches of coriander the size of bridal bouquets, tomatoes that actually smell, and goat cheese wrapped in banana leaf. Ask for queso de cabra semicurado and the cheesemaker will vacuum-seal a wedge so it survives the Ryanair cabin bag. Price: about six euros for half a kilo, cheaper than supermarket cheddar and altogether more interesting.

Breakfast options depend on your nerve. The safe route is a bocadillo de churros de pescado – fingers of white fish in airy batter, served in a crusty roll with lemon and aioli. Children think they are posh fish fingers; parents appreciate the glass of cold Dorada that arrives alongside. Adventurous eaters should try escaldón, toasted maize flour beaten into stock until it resembles savoury porridge. It tastes like Ready Brek laced with smoked paprika and, surprisingly, pairs well with a glass of red.

Wine that tastes of lava and fog

The denomination Valle de La Orotava stretches across three municipalities, yet half its tiny wineries sit within La Matanza’s borders. Vines are trained into low braided baskets, a method the Guanches copied from North Africa; the shape keeps the grapes inside the warm crater of foliage and protects them from the wind that barrels off the ocean. The resulting wines are mineral, slightly salty, the liquid equivalent of licking a basalt rock after rain.

Bodega Monje opens Monday to Friday, 11:00-18:00, and offers a three-wine flight for €6.50. On weekends the place fills with weekenders from Santa Cruz and the tasting bar turns into a social club; arrive mid-week if you want the owner’s full attention and perhaps a slurp of the experimental sparkling Listán blanco. Purchases travel safely in the aircraft hold; the winery will bubble-wrap for two euros a bottle, less than the duty you’ll pay if you try to bring the same wine back from a British supermarket later.

When to come and what to pack

October to April is the green season: wild nasturtiums clog the lane verges and temperatures hover around 20 °C, ideal for walking. July and August are hotter but rarely stifling; the trade-wind cloud acts like natural air-conditioning until midday, when it burns off and the mercury climbs to 28 °C. Evenings always need a layer – a denim jacket or light fleece – because the altitude knocks five degrees off the coast.

Rain arrives suddenly, usually as an afternoon curtain that drums on corrugated roofs for twenty minutes then stops. A compact umbrella suffices; wellies are overkill unless you plan to volunteer in the fields.

Getting there, getting about

Tenerife North airport is 18 km away, a straight run down the TF-5 and then a swoop inland on the TF-321. Car hire desks sit directly opposite arrivals; expect to pay €25-30 a day for a Fiat 500-sized runabout in low season, double at Christmas. Public buses exist – the 103 from the airport to Puerto de la Cruz, then the 352 up the hill – but services thin out after 20:00 and the stop is a ten-minute walk from the centre. If you plan to visit more than one bodega or venture onto the ridge trails, the car is worth the outlay.

Parking in the village is free but competitive on Saturdays and fiesta days. Leave the car on the lower playground road and walk up; the gradient is gentle and you’ll avoid the single-file dance of mirror-folding that passes for parking etiquette here.

The honest verdict

La Matanza will never fill a week-long itinerary. The historic core is two streets and a plaza; you can exhaust the museums – one room of conquistador helmets and Guanche pottery – in twenty minutes. Yet the place works as a half-day bolt-on to the north coast, a breathing space between the brash lights of Puerto de la Cruz and the coach parties of La Orotava. Come for the wine, stay for the ridge view, buy cheese that hasn’t seen a plastic wrapper. And when the cloud folds in and the Atlantic disappears, do what the locals do: order another glass of Listán and wait for the sun to switch the picture back on.