Juan Luis Guerra and Manny Cruz cut a merengue single, Nieve en Verano

Juan Luis Guerra and Manny Cruz have made a record together for the first time. Nieve en Verano arrives as Cruz marks ten years as a recording artist, and the collaboration is the centrepiece of that anniversary rather than a single that happened to land near it.

Cruz has been open about what it means to him. Guerra was one of the artists he grew up listening to and one of the most influential figures on his own career, and he says he is still working out how to describe standing next to him with a finished song between them. That the song is a merengue rather than anything else matters to him too.

Guerra's side of it is warmer than a courtesy. He said he was glad to work with Cruz, whose ability he rates and whose contribution to merengue in the Dominican Republic he singled out, which from a figure of his standing amounts to a public endorsement of the younger artist's place in the form.

The song takes its title literally. Snow in summer is the thing that should not be possible, and the lyric builds a love story that refuses to behave the way logic says it should. Cruz reads that as a description of his own position, the argument being that nothing is genuinely impossible, which is what he says the track is about.

A video came with it, directed by Jean Guerra and starring both artists alongside Francisca, the Dominican broadcaster and television personality, who plays out the story the song tells. The production leans on Dominican identity and culture as much as on the romance at the centre of it.

No album, label or further release date has been attached to Nieve en Verano, so for now it is a single and an anniversary marker. It is filed with the rest of the week's latin releases.