History of Bodegón Vandama
OUR BEGINNINGS AS A RESTAURANT
It all began when, in July 2003, Mr. Diego Cambreleng asked his son Álvaro, the restaurant’s present manager, to organise a barbecue in the terrace of the winery. After this party, there came others, of friends, birthdays, anniversaries, and so on, until Restaurante Bodegón Vandama officially opened on 11th December 2003, with the friendly and helpful service that has became the hallmark of the house.
A LITTLE HISTORY AND SOME TALES
In 1813, Felipe Massieu Vandale, father of my great-great-grandmother Concepción Massieu Bethencourt, acquired a property located on Caidero de los Lirios and stocks of stone and wood for building a house. Together with his sisters Mariana and Ana he also acquired three pieces of land in Hoya Oscura. The house, winery, winepress, steward’s house, cisterns and other appurtenances were built over the 19th century, with the whole passing on to Concepción Massieu Bethencourt and her husband Antonio López Botas, the most important politician of the Canary Islands in the 19th century. The property of El Monte, as we know it in the family, subsequently passed on to her grandson, José Mesa y López, who left it to his nephew Diego Cambreleng. The property was used for growing vines and for the production of wine, El Monte wine, the most renowned of Gran Canaria. After years of decline in the wine production, there was a movement for its recovery, coinciding with the creation of the Tafira Protected Landscape and the “Monte Lentiscal” denomination of origin for the wines produced in this area.
WHY VANDAMA?
It was not until the end of the fifties when the grapes grown at the property, of the listán negro, listán blanco and muscat varieties, started to be used to make wine, since up till then they were sold in the local market. Then, when choosing a name for bottling our wine, we decided to match up the name of our neighbouring volcano, Bandama, with that of the Flemish merchant Daniel Van Dame, native to Antwerp, who settled in Gran Canaria in the 16th century, acquiring, among many other properties, the Hacienda de la Caldera, the 1000 m. diameter circular crater formed by a volcanic eruption which is close to our winery. And that is how the “VANDAMA” red wine was born. We chose that name, written with “V”, since it was Daniel Van Dame’s, and so was still used in the 18th century by José de Viera y Clavijo, one of the greatest scholars of the Canary Islands, who, in his Dictionary of Natural History of the Canary Islands, when referring to the main craters existing in the islands, said that the first one was that of Pico del Teide in Tenerife, the second one was Caldera de Vandama in Gran Canaria, and the third, Caldera de Taburiente in la Palma.
ANECDOTES
In the new dining room available at Bodegón Vandama, there is a piano that belonged to Diego Mesa de León, great-grandfather of the present owner. He was a friend of Camille Saint –Saëns, one of the most important French composers of the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, who used to play this piano with occasion of his visits to El Monte.
Our great-grandfather’s friendship with Camille Saint-Saëns dates back to the beginning of the 20th century. By then he was the president of the Philharmonic Society of Gran Canaria and Saint-Saëns used to attend the rehearsals of the orchestra to hear them play and, whenever there was a musician missing, he offered to replace him, no matter the instrument, thus showing his musical talent and revealing his identity.
Saint-Saëns also had a house by the road into Guía, which he named “Villa Melpomene”, and the Town Council of that municipality invited him to play for the first time the new organ of their church.
