At the time of the conquest of America, the first vineyards were planted on the islands, in the north of Tenerife, where today the “Valle de La Orotava” PDO is located.

In order to adapt to the slope of the land, with a limited cultivation area and varieties that required long pruning to produce, the cultivation system was adapted and the Braided Cord was born.

The ingenuity of the ancestors made it possible to plant free-standing vines in areas with little usable soil and cover a large cultivated area; and in fertile areas, to take advantage of the vineyard’s winter break to remove the Braided Cord and obtain other crops that could be preserved throughout the year, such as grains and tubers.

For centuries, the Orotava Valley has preserved and the Designation of Origin promotes the Braided Cord system, as it forms part of the landscape heritage of the region and links us to the territory, its cultural heritage and its people. 

The Braided Cord is formed by inserting the planting stick into the ground and the shoots are plaited in such a way that the productive branch is placed on top of the previous year’s branch. In ancient times, laurel wood was used to support it, but nowadays iron forks are used. 

Its length is between 3-4 metres on average, but there are cordons that are more than 15 metres long. The field work involves a great deal of manual labour in all its stages, as it is not a mechanisable system, but its very uniqueness makes the Braided Cord a handcrafted task.