Mayor Marco Aurelio Pérez offers him a reception after he was honored at the island level for his contribution to the creation of the Gran Canaria Designation of Origin.
Mayor Marco Aurelio Pérez Sáncez and Councilor for Agriculture, Araceli Armas, offered a reception this Wednesday to winegrower José Rafael Cazorla Quevedo (Fataga, 1955) to personally congratulate him on the tribute he received from the Cabildo and the Gran Canaria Designation of Origin last Tuesday, during the presentation of the 2024 grape harvest.
This is not the first public recognition the farmer and musician based in Los Ovejeros de Fataga has received. The San Bartolomé de Tirajana Department of Agriculture already honored him on April 27, 2013, during the festive celebration of the XNUMXnd Farmers' Fair held in Plaza de Tunte, to thank him for "his work in viticulture and oenology in Gran Canaria."
At that event, he was publicly recognized for his enormous contribution as a pioneer of modern viticulture in the municipality of San Bartolomé de Tirajana and also as a promoter of the first wine made with municipal support from the City Council at the so-called Casa Vieja de Tunte in 2001, which would become the origin of the current Las Tirajanas Winery.
The biography of 'Pepe' Cazorla highlights that he inherited his passion for wine from his grandfather, Pepito María Cazorla, who a century earlier made homemade wine in the Los Ovejeros region of Fataga. However, he acknowledges that he truly immersed himself in viticulture when he inherited a farm in La Manzanilla from his mother and, around 1977, decided to plant it with different types of grapes to harvest and make his own wines, which he bottled under the name 'El Talayón,' the brand of his winery.
He was accompanied on that adventure by his great friend and fellow winemaker Adolfo Moreno Calvo, who recalls that they both began making their first wines "back in 1978 with the help of several Fataga winegrowers."
Moreno emphasizes that Pepe Cazorla's personality is characterized by "three virtues": a passion for planting vines; a vast knowledge of viticulture resulting from many years of work that make him an expert in pest control treatments; and a tremendous discipline and determination that have led him to acquire a large estate with distinct varieties of white and black grapes. "He is a tireless fighter against water shortages, pests, and adverse climates. From the moment he picks up the pruning shears, he's already thinking about the wine that will end up in the bottle," he says.
José Cazorla Quevedo admits that he once owned some 3.000 vines in Manzanilla, which yielded between 3.000 and 4.000 kilos of grapes each year. However, persistent droughts in recent years have reduced that production, down to 800 kilos in the last harvest. He hopes that the water from the Chira-Soria project will soon reach the Cercados de Araña dam, because it is the irrigation source that quenches the thirst of the trees and vineyards throughout the Tirajana basin and the midlands.
