Bodegas Platé is a pioneer in the production of wines through the fermentation of Canary bananas. Its first flagship product is the Platé Afrutado; a delicious drink obtained by following the same procedure as that used to obtain wine from grapes, and they have recently also launched a semi-dry Platé.
The promoters of these delicious drinks are Carlos Guevara and Cristian Ramos, who "aimed not just to offer our inhabitants and tourists new and high quality products made from bananas from the Canary Islands, but also to find a use for the thousands of tonnes of bananas grown in the Canaries that are not suitable for marketing, mostly due to superficial damages, improper sizes or to being loose pieces left over from the selection process for their packaging."
Given this situation, Guevara and Ramos opted to take advantage of these surpluses by producing two types of banana wine: fruity and semi-dry. But in recent months, other products have been added to the range, including sweet banana and vinegar elaborated from banana pulp, as well as from other products, such as mangoes, blackberries and red peppers.
Platé is not liquor, since no distilled alcohols, artificial flavours or dyes are used in making it. "When in doubt as to whether the use of the word wine is illegal or inappropriate for our product, we recommend reading Regulation (EU) No. 1308/2013, page 809 Annex VII, part 2, number 1, where it says: "Member States may authorise the use of the word "wine" if: a) it is accompanied by the name of a fruit in the form of a composite name to market products obtained by the fermentation of fruit other than grapes; or (b) it is part of a composite name.
Cristian Ramos affirms that they have doubled their sales figures compared to those achieved last year and expect this trend to continue in the coming year. He also states that "our products are currently sold by more than 300 stores across the Canarian Archipelago, with points of sale also in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Galicia, Germany and Poland, and soon in other countries. The products are also sold online.
Varieties
The two varieties of banana wine are made with bananas from the Agricultural Cooperative of the North of Tenerife (FAST), selected for their quality and optimum ripeness. In the winemaking process, the banana peel is removed and a fruit smoothie is prepared, which is fermented at a low temperature and then filtered and stabilised before being bottled. The whole process, from the moment the bananas enter the cellar until the resulting wine is bottled, lasts approximately three months.
From this process we can obtain two varieties of banana wine: a fruity one and a semi-dry.
The Platé Afrutado is a very fresh and light wine; fruity and very tropical, with some floral shades; semi-sweet, non-alcoholic and with a smooth continuous banana tone that does not tire. It combines very well with appetisers, raw (sushi, sashimi) and smoked fish, rice, salads and desserts and is recommended to be served at a temperature of between 6 and 8 °C.
