RSS FeedLast Friday my friend and mentor in all things vinous and Valencian, Joan C. Martín, asked me if I fancied joining him on a drive up to Utiel-Requena as he needed to drop by a few places to pick up some photos for a forthcoming book of his on Valencian wine that is being published by Bromera.
Joan C. Martín's Abstracta Vinícola blogpost (La Gloria de Francia)
So, off we went, chewing the fat — in every sense, as we always have the “almuerzo popular” (a titanic egg, fried potato and ham sandwich with vino con gaseosa) at Restaurante Fiesta in Requena. We shared opinions about the Pancho Campo–Jay Miller saga, and then the misguided plan to create a giant Valencia denominación de origen that is being surreptitiously pushed by Valencia’s agriculture ministry.
We dropped by Dominio de la Vega, then the Utiel-Requena DO, Pago de Tharsys (whose Pago de Tharsys Millésimé Rosé Brut Reserva 2009 has just been awarded a “Grand Médaille d’Or” at the 2012 Concours Mondial de Bruxelles) and the fine Swiss-owned Casa lo Alto, of which Joan was once director.
As we were driving back, still chatting away, Joan asked what I thought of his blog. I confessed that its very existence was news to me. So, when I got home I googled El País and “La gloria de Francia“, which he’d told me was the title of his most recent blogpost, and it came straight up. In this piece, Joan contrasts the love, value and respect that the French have for their localities and local products, which in turn enables them to sell them with conviction and efficiency. Joan points out that Corbières, with its 13,500 hectares of vines (to DO Valencia’s 15,000), has profits fifteen times those of Valencia’s.
Joan writes:
“why have we allowed the destruction of the Valencian res publica by the Agriculture Ministry, with its ministerial order destroying the Valencian denominaciones de origen signed 36 hours before the last regional elections, when the period of government was over, the government in purdah, the regional parliament closed, all for the benefit of a bunch of monopolists? Isn’t it the idea of prizing the value in names that saves a country and generates the wealth produced by the soil and its plants”
He contrasts what appears to be an attempt to enable the largest wineries to buy their grapes from anywhere in Valencia — to their economic benefit, but to the detriment of the specific local character that underpins the different Valencia region wine areas: DO Valencia, DO Utiel-Requena, DO Alicante, Indicación Geográfica Protegida Castelló, and not forgetting the excellent Cava produced in Requena). It is worth mentioning that the regional minister of agriculture, Maritina Hernández Miñana, has as her right-hand woman Marta Valsangiacomo Gil, part of the fifth generation of the family currently at the helm of heavyweight Bodega Cherubino Valsangiacomo. I think we may be in conflict of interest territory.
Joan finishes by contrasting this gigantism with the philosophy of ethical and sustainable smallholding that underpins Joan Cascant’s Microvinya and excellent Celler la Muntanya. It’s not just sentiment and romanticism, either. Scientists at the University of Valencia have published research showing that state of the art optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES technique apparently) can detect the specific origin of wines that are close geographically. 67 wines from Valencia, Utiel-Requena, Yecla and Jumilla, in this study, can be identified as a result of differences in soils, vines, microclimates and even the particular storage systems used in the production of the wines.
I’m with Joan Martín all the way on this.
“Vive la République!“, “Vive la Résistance!” and “Vive la différence!”
Vinos de España y Portugal (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
