Valencia Trader

Joan C. Martín, a teacher who does

‘Joan C. Martín, a teacher who does’
By John Maher, VT Wine Correspondent

On Friday 26 January 2007 there is to be a private celebration at the Museu de la Beneficència de Valencia in honour of Joan C. Martín for his twenty-five years of writing about wine. I am slightly awed at the prospect of being there along with the great and the good of Valencian (and beyond) literary gastronomy: the editor of the Valencian edition of El País, the president of the Academia Valenciana de Gastronomía, the writer José Soler Carnicer, even superchef Juan Mari Arzak (Joan won the Arzak Award for Gastronomy and the Media in 2005). The master of ceremonies is Manuela Romeralo, sommelier of La Sucursal Restaurant and current world champion cigar sommelier after winning the 2006 International Habanosommelier Competition in Havana.

I first came across Joan in July 2006 when my eye was caught by an article in Las Provincias announcing the winners of the Academia Valenciana de Gastronomía prizes for the year. One of the three recipients was given as a certain ‘Joan Martí’ for his writing on Valencian wine in ‘another Valencian newspaper’ throughout August 2005. I was at the time vainly seeking helpful information on Spanish wine, and I assumed that the other Valencian newspaper referred to had to be El Levante. I searched through this paper for the month in question to no avail, and also got nowhere searching on the internet. Some weeks later I did stumble over an article on Valencian wine by a Joan C. Martín in El País. I thought this had to be the guy, looked further and sure enough came across an article by the same writer on a different Valencian wine for every day of August 2005 and, to my further delight, the same again for August 2004.  From struggling vainly for guidance, I suddenly had 62 articles – and not any old stuff, but full of fascinating material on the people, history and localities behind the bottles, not to mention the literary references (from Aristotle to Wilbur Smith by way of Karl Marx). I was so overexcited that I rang up El País to see if I could get Joan’s contact details, and rather to my surprise was put straight through to his mobile. Thankfully, this was in message mode, as I hadn’t prepared anything to say. I left a message, though, and was pleasantly surprised to be called back that afternoon, and we arrange to meet up the next day, a Saturday.

Our meeting got off to a good start when it transpired that he is fanatically keen on all things Irish, where both my parents are from and our childhood holidays were spent. We talked about the lack of material on Valencian wine aimed at the general reader, very much a reflection of the low esteem in which it was long held and the iron grip of Rioja and, latterly, Ribera del Duero on Spanish wine drinkers. He did give me a rare copy of a book of his published twenty years ago, El manual de los vinos valencianos (sadly out of print), a fascinating overview of the history of Valencian wine and its situation and prospects at the time – a new edition is highly overdue. It was also clear that many of the possibilities that Joan had glimpsed in 1986 had come to fruition. Valencian winemakers had recovered many of their better traditions and had embraced modern wine-making ideas and techniques. It is also true that that the visitor or new arrival, however interested, would have a hard time finding any of this out. I always enjoy the look, somewhere between amazement and panic, whenever I make one of my periodic visits to an Oficina de Turismo to ask if they have any information on wines of the region. There was one excellent guide to the wines of the region, inevitably coordinated by Joan. This was in the autumn edition of Viajer@s por la Comunitat Valenciana) magazine (issue number 3, a new quarterly from Gratacels publishers celebrating the people, places and produce of the Valencia region. This issue has twenty-eight pages dedicated to some of the region’s best and most intriguing wines and the characters who make them, plus five different suggested wine routes full of beauty stops, places to eat and the like.

It was only after several meetings and meals together that Joan let on that he did more than just write about wine, he makes the stuff. He is currently with Bodegas Emilio Clemente, a family-owned bodega based around a grand nineteenth-century ‘chateau’ set amongst pine trees and vineyards in Utiel-Requena, and which is at the forefront of the new wave of Valencian wine. They make just three wines, two reds and a white: Emilio Clemente Crianza, with its distinctive ‘EC’ label, is a characterful Tempranillo-Cabernet Sauvignon blend in a modern style where the oak ageing is not allowed to overwhelm the fruit of the wine. The younger red is ‘Peñas Negras’ (Black Rocks), with the same grapes plus Merlot, which spend less time in oak to emphasise fruit and youthful vigour. 2006 saw a white wine added to the stable, ‘Florante’ vintage of 2005, made from the noble varieties Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc in happy combination with the local Tardana grape. The wine is fermented in oak barrels for depth of flavour, while again the emphasis is on freshness and acidity, and great things are promised for next summer’s version after the fine 2006 harvest.

The Emilio Clemente wines are readily available, from El Corte Inglés and elsewhere, but there is one wine made by Joan that is not available for purchase. There are a handful of bottles left in his cellar of an earlier venture with some partners to make a great Valencian wine. Their late lamented Companyia Valenciana de Vins i Espirituosos made 5,001 bottles of Cordial Gran Reserva 1994 ‘Millennium’ from the Tempranillo and tricky Tintorera grapes. It is dedicated to Joan’s great hero, the Irish-American film director John Ford (or as the label says to ‘Sean A. O’Feeney Martin (John Ford) Galway 1894–Palm Desert 1973’). Thanks to Joan’s generous gift of a bottle, I was privileged to be able to decant and drink bottle number 3524 with family and friends on Christmas Day, a very memorable experience. On Friday night I hope to return the favour and use the immortal words of Marshal Curly Wilcox at the end of John Ford’s ‘Stagecoach’: ‘Doc, I’ll buy you a drink.’

Our Wine Correspondent, John Maher, has his own website with information on the different wine types of the Valencian region.  For more information go to www.winesofvalencia.com