Joan Àngel Lliberia began the tasting with a fascinating bit of Roman history which gives the bodega its name. You can read it for yourself on the website. I’ll try to be as refreshingly brisk as the tasting. There weretwo whites and two reds. First up was Edetana Blanc 2010. Joan Àngel emphasised the wine’s fidelity to the bodega’s garnacha blanca, but I thought there was a lot going on in the glass. There is viognier and muscat à petits grains in with the garnach, and though just half the wine is placed in cask for only four months, there was a definite oak presence. The challenge in this Mediterranean climate is to get enough acidity, and that was there, coming in after an initial creaminess.

Next up we had Edetària Blanc 2009 (85% garnacha blanca, 15% macabeo) . This wine is barrel-fermented, a more intense version of the first wine, more sumptuosly creamy, but matched with a bracing minerality. Joan Àngel emphasized throughout that his wines were made to work with food, to clean the palate and to have your mouth asking for more of both.

If last Monday’s tasting of Spanish white wines focused on archetypes, these two white wines were more about specific vineyards and the bodega’s desire to communicate its distinctive personality and, of course, that of garnacha blanca.

The first red was Edetana Negre 2009 (garnacha, cariñena, garnacha peluda ["hairy garnacha] and ull de llebre – aka tempranillo). This wine was also presented as being straightforward, and it was certainly fresh and full of fruit, but again it had a mineral backbone. There were plenty of tannins, as my furred-feeling teeth told. The wine will soften further in bottle, biut it is already delicious – approachable but at the same time serious.

The last wine was the red Edetària 2008 (garnacha peluda, syrah, cariñena and cabernet sauvignon), and was a sumptuously powerful wine that at the same time offered elegance and freshness.

It was great to be able to nip up to the centre of town and pop into such an enjoyable, and free, tasting. I’ll certainly be spending some money on getting hold of these wines again, though.

The lunch was in the private dining room of that beacon of Valencian wining and dining, Casa Montaña, in the dilapidated and delightful (and urbanistically threatened) district of El Canyamelar-El Cabanyal down by the sea (people increasingly refer to the four maritime districts – el Grao, Canyamelar, Cabanyal and Malvarrosa as as “El Cabanyal”, but this irritates both pedants and residents of the other neighbourhoods. Casa Montaña is technically in Canyamelar, as calle Mediterráneo separates the area from Cabanyal).

The joint 2011 winners were two bodegas – Segura Viudas and Dominio de la Vega – best known for their Cavas, but who also make good and interesting still wines, as they showed us. So, we were met with a glass of the classy and rich Cava Torre Galimany Gran Reserva from Segura Viudas, closely followed by Cava Dominio de la Vega Reserva Especial. Both cavas were rich and sophisticated expressions of high quality Cava.

The tapas came thick and fast. Here’s the menu.

As you can see, the accompanying wines aimed to display what these bodegas are doing apart from Cava. I really enjoyed the La Creu de Lavit, doing amazing things with the generally not highly regarded Xarel·lo grape.

Though Alvaro Faubel from Dominio de la Vega kept stressing what a simple and cheap rosé they were making in their Rosado Añacal (100% Bobal), it was both straightforwardly enjoyable and hefty enough to really help the food along – it’s worth pointing out what good value it is, too. It says something when a bodega is happy to bring out a 3 euro wine in front of its peers and the press.

Segura Viudas Mas d’Aranyó is a Tempranillo and Cabernet Sauvignon blend showing that they don’t ignore leading national and international varieties.

Dominio de la Vega confirmed their identification with Requena by offering us their very modern  Bobal 2010.

By this time, the table of wine producers and communicators was in increasingly heated debate about everything under the sun. Like all good Spanish sobremesas, the wine and teh talk went on for some considerable time. My struggles with incomprehensible tax forms seemed a long way away. For that, and much else, I’m grateful.

Feel free to contact Joan with any enquiries. His details are:

Avla Vinícola
C/ Sant Jacint de Castanyeda 8-bajo
València 46006 (Montolivet)
Tel: 96 374 82 50
Mòbil: 696 351 407
Web: www.joancmartin.com
mail: aulavinicola@hotmail.com

It’s been fascinating to see how a study of an apparently highly specialized
subject – the initial resistance, eventual arrival and subsequent response in Valencia to the phylloxera epidemic which destroyed virtually all of Europe’s vines in the fifty years following the pest’s arrival in 1863 – can strike a highly relevant chord.

Joan Martín’s “Valencians contra la fil·loxera: pràctiques vitícoles tradicionals i innovacions agronòmiques” is certainly an important regional study of this catastrophic event in European agriculture. However, recent readings and discussions of the book have seen one aspect of the author’s analysis be picked up by commentators and given a contemporary context.

After a talk at the very fine Ateneu de Bétera civic and cultural  centre early in the New Year, an article appeared in El Punt Avui highlighting that the book’s argument that the solidarity of the agricultural communities in resisting the threat of phylloxera, and then sharing the struggle of dealing with the crisis and its economic and social consequences when it came, was a model of solidarity and collaborative effort. Joan remembers clearly the word that his community used for this joint effort, “conjugar-se”.

Vicent Partal, founder and guiding spirit of the Catalan  the author of the article, highlights the need for this attitude in today’s devastated economy, and the absence hitherto of serious-mindedness from Valencia’s political leadership. Catalonia’s leading daily “La Vanguardia” published a very similar article (“a kind of retweet” as Vicent Partal referred to it tongue-in-cheek), “Una parábola – una palabra – valenciana” by Antoni Puigverd. Again, the rampant corruption and vainglory of today’s political and social elite are held up in stark contrast to the humility and self-scarifice of yesteryear.

It would be nice if this drove sales of the book, but apart from that it is good to see a book on phylloxera in Valencia enter mainstream debate.

We’ll overlook the unorthodox spelling of Quixote’s steed.

Here is what I wrote:

Spanish Treasures

I am an unabashed fan of the wines of the three Denominaciones de Origen of the Comunitat Valenciana: Alicante, Utiel-Requena and Valencia. This is partly because I live in Valencia, but it also has to do with the extraordinary range of wines produced in the region; “new wave” and old school red and white wines, plus excellent Cavas, and Alicante’s unique madeirized Fondillón, of which more below.

Alicante is perhaps best known for its red wines made from the Monastrell grape (generally known elsewhere as Mourvèdre, itself derived from the Valencia town of Sagunto, for centuries named Murviedro), and its elegantly drinkable Moscatel white wines, which run the gamut from dry and grapey to luscious sweetness.

Utiel-Requena has its own signature grape, Bobal, with its brilliantly deep red colour, chewy tannins and spicy dark fruitiness alongside a bracing acidity. It is also particularly high in resveratrol that is supposed to makr red wine good for the heart.

To add to the confusion, there is an interesting resurgence of quality wine production taking place in Castellón province to the north, which has achieved official recognition as “Vinos de la Tierra de Castellón”. Finally, one of the classiest bodegas in the Utiel-Requena area, Bodega Mustiguillo, has succeeded in obtaining its very own geographical status as Vino de la Tierra El Terrerazo.

Alicante wine was celebrated in England for centuries. The anonymous satirical verse “Colyn Blowbols Testament” from around 1500 tells

“Of Colyn Blobolle, whan he had dronke a tante
Bothe of Teynt and of wyne Alycaunt,
Till he was drounke as any swyne;”

Blowbol was a term of the time for drunkard. The archaic usage “tent” is an English corruption of the Spanish “tinto” for red wine from Spain. This early reference to Alicante wine is one of many from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries that speaks of the quality of the wines from the southernmost province of the Valencia region on Spain’s eastern seaboard. Parliament decreed in 1660, “That from and after the First Day of September 1661, no Canary Wines, Muscadell, or Alligant, or other Spanish, or Sweet Wines, shall be sold or uttered, by any Person or Persons within his Majesty’s Kingdom of England, Dominion of Wales, and Town of Berwick upon Tweed, by Retail, for above Eighteen-pence the Quart”.

Despite the array of Spanish wines available in Britain centuries ago, today wine merchants despair of the reluctance of their customers to explore further afield than Rioja.

Alongside the time-honoured varieties that have been mentioned, Monastrell, Moscatel, Bobal and the like, the last twenty years have seen the introduction of international varieties. Syrah does particularly well in Utiel-Requena, but there is every imaginable grape variety, from Sauvignon Blanc to Pinot Noir by way of Malbec and Viognier. A multi-course banquet could be accompanied all the way by different Valencian wines.

Here, I’ve opted to concentrate mainly on the established regional varieties. I’ve imagined that banquet, with each dish having a different wine from the Valencia region.

You might kick off with Valencian Cava. Cavas from Dominio de la Vega in Requena (Valencia) have been voted best Spanish Cava at the Spanish professionals’ blind-tasting at Enoforum. Jeroboams (www.jeroboams.co.uk) have their NV Dominio de la Vega Brut (£12.25) and their 2008 Brut Reserva Especial (£18.45). These wines will convince you that there is a lot more to Cava than “two for the price of one” supermarket offers. I’d suggest buying both.

For the whites, I’ve found a beguilingly fruity and good value Moscatel de Alexandria, Marina Alta, from the slick Bocopa cooperative in Alicante (www.bocopa.com). Their Marina Alta 2010 is offered by Vinissimus UK (www.vinissimus.co.uk) at just £4.35. I think it would be intriguing to contrast this very Mediterranean Moscatel with an international variety from the ambitiously perfectionist Bodegas Enrique Mendoza (www.bodegasmendoza.com). The Enrique Mendoza Chardonnay 2009 is available from from Wine&Ham (www.wineandham.com) for 7.10 euros a bottle.

I’m sorry to say that I haven’t been able to find a single rosé from Valencia available in the UK. This is a shame, as there are rosados with real personality that have the body to hold their own with the paellas and other local dishes, while being a cooling balm in the summer heat.

Naturally enough, there is no difficulty in finding red wines. Here are a few worth going on with. Berry Bros. & Rudd (www.bbr.com) offer two Monastrell wines from the same modern winery in Alicante. These are Laderas de El Sequé at £9.15 and its big brother El Sequé 2006 at £22.95.  It might be interesting to compare these with two organic wines from Bodegas Los Frailes (www.bodegaslosfrailes.com), which has been in the Velázquez family since 1771. Their Bilogía 2005 (two grape varieties: 50% Monastrell and 50% Tempranillo, at £124.40 per bottle) and Trilogía 2005 (three varieties – geddit?): 70% Monastrell, 20% Cabernet Sauvignon and 10% Tempranillo, £165.54 for twelve bottles at at easywine.co.uk [the site appears to have vanished, try uvinum.co.uk] are all body and elegance, very Spanish, but utterly different in style to wines from Rioja.

Moving on to Utiel-Requena, I’d like to suggest a wine that is made by an Englishman, Philip Diment. He is the owner of Mesón Don Felipe (www.mesondonfelipe.com) near Waterloo Station, which claims to be London’s “first authentic tapas bar”, but he always dreamed of making his own wine near the Mediterranean. At Casa del Pinar (www.casadelpinar.com) he makes the supple and elegant Sanfir (Bobal, Tempranillo, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah). The 2004 is drinking splendidly and is available from Moreno Wines (www.morenowinedirect.com) for £15.31 – and at Mesón Don Felipe it’s naturally a snip to have with your tapas at £15.30.

Perhaps the red wines ought to be rounded off with a thoroughbred Bobal. Bodega Mustiguillo has its own sui generis appellation, Vino de la Tierra El Terrerazo. There are several UK stockists. Vinissimus UK (www.vinissimus.co.uk) offers all three of their three red wines, the exuberant young Mestizaje 2010 (Bobal, Merlot, Tempranillo, Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah, £8.97), their Finca Terrerazo 2007 (Bobal and Tempranillo, 92 Parker points, £21.28) and their Quincha Corral 2007 (100% Bobal, £48.43).

Sweet wines can be confusing. The cheap “Moscatels de Valencia” that you see in supermarkets and are often offered free in Valencian restaurants at the end of your meal are, in fact, unfermented grape juice with added grape spirit, so not really wine at all. For authentic, sophisticated sweet Moscatel wine the past master in the Valencia region is Felipe Gutiérrez de la Vega (www.castadiva.es). His Casta Diva La Báscula Moscatel 2006 is fabulously rich and is offered by Moreno Wines (www.morenowinedirect.com) at £19.99 for a 50cl bottle.

Finally, the pièce de résistance for what the Spanish call the “sobremesa”, the relaxed and often lengthy conversation at table that follows a good meal. Alicante’s unique Fondillón was one of the most prized and expensive wines in the world in the nineteenth-century. It is an amber, oxidized wine made from Monastrell grapes left to overripen on the vine. The sweet wine is then left for a minimum of ten years, and generally far more, in huge casks, during which the colour gradually turns from bright red to amber, and the intense sweetness softens and blends with the sharper complexity accompanying the oxidization or “maderization”. This legendary wine almost disappeared in the twentieth century, but it is a classic, made only in Alicante, that was once a staple of European royal tables and ranks alongside Port, Sherry and Madeira.

I have located only one UK supplier, but they stock a classic. Salvador Poveda (www.salvadorpoveda.com) was one of the wineries most responsible for keeping this style of wine alive, and Winedeal (www.winedeal.co.uk) have the Salvador Poveda Gran Reserva Fondillón 1987 at £45.99 [this appears no longer to be offered, but there is the even more exciting 1964 available from Underwood Wines]. This really is history in a glass.

I recommend starting with these, and then why not hop over to Valencia or Alicante and explore other possibilities that have yet to fight their way into the UK market. There’s life beyond Benidorm.

Counsel article PDF

Alforins.com

I always look forward to the monthly newsletters from Alforins.com, the online retailer specializing in wines from the Clariano subzone of DO Valencia (though it has wines from elsewhere, as well as very good olive oil and chocolatee and such).

La Amistad 2010, Bodegas Bernabé Navarro (DO Alicante)

The wines are not only reasonably priced, there tends to be a surprise or two. This month they offer a wine made from a grape I’ve never come across before, Rojal. It is “La Amistad” 2010 from Bodegas Bernabé Navarro (DO Alicante). This bodega has initiated a project “Viñedos Culturales” (Cultural Vineyards) which is based (I quote from the newsletter) “on the philosophy of limited production from  vineyards from this ferociously arid territory,  produced with complete respect for the land, along with the recovery of grape varieties and vines that have been virtually forgotten by man, if not by God, with a view to showing what they can do.  Wines that reflect a territory, a culture, tradition, and interpret what the land provides, without manipulation. In a word, going back to the beginning.” La Amistad is the first product of this initiative. I’m certainly ordering a bottle or two, if only out of curiosity.

Paquito el Chocolatero 2009, Celler la Muntanya, DO Alicante

The second bottle highlighted is from Celler la Muntanya, and is a “wine that tastes of pasodoble”. It is named after one of the most famous, and overplayed pasodobles of all, Paquito el Chocolatero. This “Paquito el Chocolatero” 2009. This is another product in the “microvinya” concept of the the bodega and its founder, Juan Cascant. This particular microvinya is owned by the son of Gustavo Pascual Falcó, the composer of  the classic work. It is also a tribute to the innumerable town and village bands that are such a feature of the Comunitat Valenciana, and to the many musicians who till the soil when they are not producing almost always highly accomplished music.

I salute alforins.com and these two cultural and vinous initiatives.

Martha Stewart

As a proud and historic bodega from Alicante, Primitivo Quiles will not have favoured being described as “Valencian”, but Alicante is a province of the Comunitat Valenciana after all.

This winery makes classic Alicante Monastrell (and Moscatel) wines, but it is good to see it in a mainstream American environment. It is lovingly described by the US wine store K&L Wine Merchants as a “wine nerd” wine that is “the kind of wine that blows K&L employees’ minds”, but it also has mainstream appeal. I wouldn’t describe it as “light” by any means, as they do on the Martha Stewart website. Try it and see what you think.

Gary Vaynerchuk

who is an increasingly big noise in the wine world and doing a great job of promoting wine beyond established wine drinkers, did a tasting of three wines from Valencia on his Daily Grape site. Gary V kicked off by saying that he was “excited” by the area. He kicks off with a Bobal rosado (he pronounces it “Babol”, oddly), the Aula “Rosado de Lágrima” 2010 from the Coviñas cooperative (DO Valencia) – see more on this near namesake, but unrelated, site. “Strawberry, rose-flower”, he says about the nose. “Attractive price points”, “crisp acidity”, “vibrant fresh rosé”. “I like it,” says invisible sidekick.

There follows the  Tapias Merlot Crianza 2005, not a very representative grape or wine from the DO Valencia, and it’s getting on a bit.It’s produced by gigantic producer of cheap wine El Villar Cooperativa Agrícola. “Huge eucalyptus”, but “very green”, “amateurish”. Get’s a big thumbs down.

Then the sparkling that we bought to christen our empty apartment when we moved to Valencia. The excellent Requena winery Pago de Tharsys‘ sparkling white Único made with 100% Bobal (so not officially a Cava as not a grape admitted by DO Cava). On the nose he finds “rubber, banana, guava, artichoke, lemon peel”. In the mouth “almond paste, apple, and the viscosity rivals $30-40 champagnes” “very good sparkling wine”.

Gary V signs off with “Valencia, a region that needs to be explored”. So that’s good, though his was an odd selection. I wonder if they just went to a wine shop and bought what they happened to have from Valencia. Two cooperative wines and then an exotic novelty in the form of sparkling Bobal. No red Bobal in the tasting, which is how it is almost always found. Still, good to have this interest and enthusiasm shown. One day he and his compatriots will get the pronunciation right, too.

The good news is that Joan C. Martín has written another key study about Valencian wine. The bad news is that I’m due to make a speech at the launch at El Corte Inglés (Av. Francia) on Tuesday 14 June.

This latest work is not about today’s wines and winemakers, but about an agricultural catastrophe that devastated all of Europe’s winemaking regions for decades after its arrival in France in 1863. Phylloxera is a pest (a sort of louse) that destroys vines. It arrived from America and proceeded on its path of devastation.

In the Valencia region, the plague had a double effect. First, it did not arrive here until 1904, later than the rest of Europe. This meant that the late nineteenth century was boom time for the wine industry of the region, as the rest of Europe saw production decimated, the demand for – and price of – wine from Valencia rose spectacularly.

However, when phylloxera did arrive, the rest of Europe was recovering, having established that grafting vines onto phylloxera-resistant North American root stock was effective. The impact on Valencia was dramatic. The vines died as the market disappeared. To all intents and purposes, the long history of the Valencia region, from Alicante in the south to Castellón in the north, as a major wine producer was eliminated at a stroke. Vines were ripped out throughout the region and replaced with other agricultural commodities. Castellón’s centuries-old reputation as a wine centre, hardly remained as a memory until recently.

To add to the collapse, the boom before the crash had seen old winemaking traditions and good practice undermined by the chance of selling any old wine at premium prices. When the Valencia region began again to produce wine, its reputation for quality had vanished. It was now regarded as a source of bulk wine for export.

Joan C. Martín’s book blends personal family recollections of the day-to-day with contextual scholarly research. Joan is a Valencian through and through, and it is excellent that to his list of books in English, Spanish and Catalan can be added a magnum opus in his native Valencian (I say this because the Valencian Catalan in which he wrote the excellent “Els vins de l’Arc Mediterrani” had its Valencian usages replaced with Catalan idioms by the publisher). However, the subject matter is not only of regional interest. It is a remarkable regional take on a Continental agricultural cataclysm. Now I think about it, I’m honoured to be asked to give that speech. And there’ll be plenty of excellent Valencian wine at the launch.