Canary Islands Against the British Empire: When Wine Was an Act of Resistance

The history of wine in the Canary Islands cannot be understood only from viticulture, trade, or the international prestige that its Malvasías achieved. There are episodes in which wine was a symbol of dignity, rebellion, and defense of the territory, even at the cost of its own destruction.

One of these chapters — as powerful as it is little known — is the one told in a recently published article “Canary Islands Against the British Empire: Spill Your Wine Before Kneeling to London,” published in the national media Vozpópuli and written by journalist José Luis Jiménez.

The text takes us back to the 17th century, when the British Crown tried to impose a commercial monopoly on Canarian wine through the so-called Canary Company, a society backed by the English royal power and 71 London merchants.

Faced with that attempt to absolutely control the trade of Malvasía — the famous Canary Sack that filled London taverns — the Canarian growers responded with an extreme decision: break the casks and spill the wine rather than sell it at prices of submission.

Beyond the historical fact, this story helps to understand why wine in the Canary Islands has been — and continues to be — territory, identity, and collective memory. A wine culture that is not born of privilege, but of resistance; not from imposed monoculture, but from diversity and rootedness in the volcanic landscape.

VOXPOPULI - Publicado: 19/01/2026

Canary Islands Against the British Empire: Spill Your Wine Before Kneeling to London

Tinerfeño growers, in an epic act of sabotage, burst hundreds of wine casks intended for the “Canary Company.”

That was the first battle of a war that Madrid watched from the sidelines and that the Canary Islanders fought hand to hand against the English lion, defending their right that the fruit of their effort not be a means of exchange in the hands of outsiders. The origin was a society with capital from the English Crown called the Canary Company and born with 71 London merchants.

Just the name raised suspicions: a denomination that in English sounded like money, but on the shores of Tenerife and Gran Canaria began to smell like chain and hunger.

Seventy-one merchants sitting in their mahogany offices far from the sun of the Tenerife vineyards intended the Malvasía wine to flow through a single channel — theirs — as if the taste of the grape could be forced into obedience to a royal seal.

But history, that other great drunkard, taught the English that when you try to trap Canarian trade in a monopoly net, there is always a knot that comes undone or a barrel that breaks. And while the English barons calculated their pounds of silver, in Puerto de la Cruz and Garachico the air already smelled not of submission but of the sour fermentation of the rebellion that was to come.

Because in the spring of 1665, the aroma of Malvasía — the famous Canary Sack that Shakespeare immortalized — not only filled the taverns of London but became a matter of state. Under the reign of Charles II Stuart, without passing through Madrid, the British Crown desperately sought a way to centralize trade and, above all, to secure tax revenue after the turbulent years of the Commonwealth.

Thus was born the Canary Company, a monopolistic entity that received its Royal Patent in March 1665. Its seal was a declaration of intent: an English lion guarded by two bunches of grapes with the silhouette of Mount Teide in the background. The objective was clear: that no gallon of Canarian wine enter England without passing under the control of the 71 founding merchants, the so-called freemen of London.

The Architects of the Monopoly and the Capital at Stake

At the head of this mercantile machine was Sir Arthur Ingram, appointed governor of the Company, a man trusted by the royal circle. Accompanying him were influential figures in the City like Sir William Thompson and a council of “assistants” who directed the strategy from the English capital. Each of the original 71 partners contributed capital of 250 pounds sterling of the time.

To understand the magnitude of this investment in today’s terms, if we adjust purchasing power and gold value to 2026 euros, we would be talking about an initial capitalization exceeding 6.5 million euros. This fund not only covered logistics but financed a network of factors or resident agents on the islands who set prices so low that they ruined local growers.

The ‘Canary Sack’ and the Tonnage of Discord

The main business was wine, but not just any wine. England demanded the sweet Malvasía of Tenerife, the Vidueño (dry blended wines), and the exclusive wine of Palma. At the height of this traffic, it is estimated that some 15,000 casks of wine were exported annually. In 2025 money, the annual business volume of these exports would approach 95 million euros, an astronomical figure for the island economy of the time.

To move this “liquid gold,” the Canary Company used deep-draught ships like the English Merchantmen — vessels armed to defend against Barbary and Dutch piracy. Ships named Golden Fleece or Mary Rose (in their merchant versions) plied the route between London and the Port of La Orotava (today Puerto de la Cruz) and Garachico, loaded outward with English manufactures — woolen cloth and iron products — to force a commercial exchange that always benefited the metropolis.

The Growers’ Rebellion and the Garachico Spill

The imposition of maximum prices by the Company’s agents lit the fuse of indignation. On the islands, the resistance was led by the landed aristocracy and the clergy, but also by influential foreign merchants outside the monopoly, such as Jewish and Irish factors. A name that stands out in institutional resistance was the Count of Molina, Spanish ambassador in London, who tirelessly maneuvered at the court of Charles II to denounce the abuses.

The climax came in July 1666 in Garachico, in what is known as the “Wine Spill.” The Tinerfeño growers, in an epic act of sabotage, burst hundreds of casks of wine destined for the Company, flooding the port’s streets with Malvasía rather than allowing its sale at misery prices.

Professor Bethencourt Massieu, in his work Canary Islands and England: The Wine Trade (1650-1800) notes that Tenerife exported in that era more than four and a half million liters of just the variety that the British wanted. Viera y Clavijo records that between 300 and 400 farming neighbors “forced open the doors of the bodegas, then destroyed the barrels and casks full of wine, spilling their contents and forming streams in the streets, one of the most unusual floods to be read in the annals of the world.” From London, King Charles II decreed: “no wines, nor other manufactures or merchandise (…) from the Canary Islands (…) shall enter henceforth into this our Kingdom.”

The Fall of the Company and the Triumph of Commercial Freedom

The Canary Company was born under an ill star. To the conflict in the islands were added disasters in London: the Great Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of 1666, which devastated warehouses and offices of many partners. In addition, the fall from favor of Lord Clarendon, the Company’s great political protector, left Sir Arthur Ingram without support in Parliament.

Under pressure from independent merchants (the “interlopers”) and Spanish diplomatic protests, Charles II was forced to revoke the Royal Patent in September 1667. The Canary Company was dissolved, leaving behind a trail of lawsuits and a historical lesson: in the 17th-century Atlantic, not even the power of an English king could contain the will of a people who preferred to see their wine run through the ravines rather than hand it over to a foreign monopoly.

And so the Company’s dream unraveled — not because there was no wine or because the ships did not know the route, but because the world is too wide to be kept in the pocket of a few. The factors left, the privileges were withdrawn, and the Royal Patent ended up as a yellowed piece of paper that time, with its blind patience, covered with dust in the archives of London, where the names of Sir Arthur Ingram and the Count of Molina now rest in the same silence.

In the end, after so much litigation and court intrigue, the only thing that remained were the vines sinking their roots into the volcanic soil, indifferent to human laws, waiting for the next winter to turn water into that miracle of sugar and fire that no king, no matter how hard he tries, can ever call entirely his own.

Artículo original publicado el 19/01/26 VOXPOPULI

José Luis Jiménez

Canarias