Taste 1973 Joins the Bollinger Embassy Circle, Just 10 Restaurants in Spain

The Plaque That Says “Embassy”

Taste 1973, Hotel Villa Cortés (Playa de las Américas, Arona). Announcement of 21 August 2025.

On 21 August 2025 we announced on Instagram that Taste 1973 had joined the Bollinger Embassy circle of restaurants in Spain. The announcement came from the restaurant’s account, @1973taste.restaurant, and arrived with a group photo: the whole team — dining room, kitchen and management — posing in the entrance courtyard, beneath the “1973” on the façade and the horses at the door, holding the red box and the diploma from the champagne house. The kitchen staff posed in white chef’s jackets, caps and aprons, and the Bollinger logo could be seen on one of them.

“We are proud to announce that Taste 1973 is now part of the exclusive circle of Bollinger Embassy Restaurants in Spain, only 10 in the whole country, and we are one of them,” the text read. And it went on with the thanks, which is the part that represents us best: “Heartfelt thanks to Grupo Varma @varma_esp and to everyone who has always believed in this project. This recognition is as much ours as it is yours.”

It’s worth saying where each piece of information comes from, because in this case there is only one source, and it’s ours. Everything told here comes from that post and the two photographs accompanying it. We have not located any press release, official communication from Champagne Bollinger or Grupo Varma, or coverage in the media of Tenerife or the Canary Islands discussing this admission or explaining what the circle consists of: how many restaurants make it up today, who the other nine are, or what is needed to join. So we’re telling it as what it is — a distributor’s recognition of a house it works with — and not as a culinary distinction along the lines of the Michelin star or the Repsol Sun that Taste 1973 already holds.

“Embajada” Translates “Embassy”

The second photograph in the announcement settles the question of the name. It’s a close-up of the plaque, held with both hands inside its red presentation box: a golden plate with the house’s crest and three lines engraved in black, “Champagne Bollinger”, “Maison Fondée en 1829” and, in the bottom right corner, “Embassy”. What we call “embajada” in Spanish is, therefore, the very word the brand itself uses on the object it presents. Among the people tagged in the image, besides Diego Schattenhofer, is Champagne Bollinger’s verified account; the text also tagged Grupo Varma and three personal accounts, without stating their role or part in the event.

Grupo Varma, the Name We Thanked

The company thanked in the announcement for the admission is a drinks and food distributor that operates that part of its business under the Varma Spirits & Wines brand, and that lists Bollinger among the labels it distributes in Spain. What doesn’t appear on either website is the embassy programme: neither Varma’s nor Bollinger’s describes the circle of restaurants, so the figure of ten given in the announcement remains, to this day, the only information available, and it comes from us.

Why a Champagne House Ends Up in Arona

Taste 1973 is the restaurant at the Hotel Villa Cortés, in Playa de las Américas, run by Diego Schattenhofer as executive chef. It has a Michelin star and a Repsol Sun, and a kitchen that has spent years turning over the same question: what can be done with what this island produces if it is studied properly. None of that holds up without the dining room, and the dining room of a restaurant like this rests, to a large extent, on the wine cellar.

That’s why joining the circle is less of a trophy and more of a confirmation of work that isn’t seen from the table: choosing the bottles, storing them properly, serving them at the right temperature and knowing which dish they go with. In this house, pairing has never been a last-minute add-on — just consider how much it has cost us to find the right wine for matured goat meat — and the dialogue between a champagne with the structure of Bollinger and the larder of Canarian gastronomy is exactly the kind of conversation we’re interested in having.

What remains, though, is the part we liked best about the announcement and that no plaque can hold: in the courtyard photograph there is no chef with a diploma, but the whole team lined up in front of the restaurant’s door. The recognition arrives in the name of the house because it is the whole house that earns it, service after service. “This recognition is as much ours as it is yours,” we wrote that day. We still think so.

Wine pairing with matured goat meat

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