Six wines and the 1775 winery at El Grifo, La Geria

El Grifo stands on the LZ-30 at kilometre 11, in San Bartolomé on the northern edge of La Geria, 3 km from the Monumento al Campesino. You walk in past César Manrique's sculpture of the griffin that gives the winery its name. The Wine Lovers visit, the winery's flagship, starts with a glass of its sparkling wine and a walk through what it calls the Vineyard of the Impossible, with a second wine poured among vines the winery says are centuries old.

Then comes the history. The old winery is now the Wine Museum: the original winepress, the stone dated 1775 that was found during the restoration of 1986, carried out with advice from César Manrique, a friend of the family, and the tools and tanks used here until the new winery replaced it. The winery says it still keeps barrels of Malvasía from 1881. Wine Lovers is the only one of its visits that also opens the family house and the library, more than 5,000 works on wine, opened by the poet José Hierro in 1998. It ends with a guided tasting of four more wines, six in all, with cheeses from the island. GetYourGuide's listing names the grapes as Malvasía, Listán Negro and Syrah. The group is limited to 12, adults only, in Spanish or English, for 120 minutes.

The landscape is the reason to come. The Timanfaya eruptions of 1730 to 1736 buried the centre of Lanzarote under lava and ash, and from 1740, the winery's history says, farmers dug down through the ash to the old soil to plant vines. Each vine sits in its own hollow in the black picón, behind a semicircular stone wall that faces the trade wind; the ash soaks up the night's moisture and holds it for the roots, so the vines live without irrigation. La Geria became a protected landscape in 1994. El Grifo farms 100 hectares between 250 and 462 metres, 50 of them certified organic, and calls itself one of the ten oldest wineries in Spain.

Of the wine visits sold on GetYourGuide on Lanzarote, this is the best-rated of the three we compared: 4.9 from about 370 reviews on 26 October 2026, with guides scored 4.9 out of 5 and value 4.8. It costs 50 euros, exactly what El Grifo charges on its own site, so the choice of where to book comes down to convenience; GetYourGuide's calendar sits on this page and the listing offers free cancellation. The nearest rival on GetYourGuide is a 3.5 hour trek through La Geria's vineyards ending with a wine and cheese tasting, 4.8 from 14 reviews, from 40.80 euros: good if you want the walk more than the history. The Timanfaya and La Geria coach tour, 4.5 from about 790 reviews, 63 euros with pickup, gives wine a short stop on a volcano day.

El Grifo sells three lighter visits itself. The Tasting of Selected Wines is five wines in 35 minutes in the wine bar, no tour, for 30 euros. El Grifo Your Way is an audio-guided walk round the vineyard and the old winery with two wines, 15 euros, and free for children up to 17. Wine Lovers and Gastronomy, 95 euros, adds a paired lunch at the El Grifo restaurant in Mozaga, for up to 10. For the vines, the museum and the library in one visit, Wine Lovers is the one we would book. For the volcanoes that made this landscape, see The volcanoes, on foot, or The island in a day.