JUAN CARLOS SANCHA & FERNANDO MARTINEZ DE TODA
As a professor of viticulture at the University of La Rioja, Fernando Martínez de Toda (pictured below) has taught several generations of winemakers how to tend vines and produce quality wines. A national authority in his field, with a wealth of articles and books to his name, he is also an engaging communicator and is the driving force behind the recovery of endangered grape varieties in Rioja – a project he began working on in the late 1980s.
Juan Carlos Sancha (right), an agronomist who also started teaching at the University of La Rioja, was Martínez de Toda’s main partner in the project. Sancha has devoted his career to developing the potential of these threatened varieties, first at Bodegas Ijalba, then through his own venture in his hometown of Baños de Río
Tobía in the Alto Najerilla valley (juancarlossancha.com).
Here Sancha grows and produces varietal wines from Garnacha, Tempranillo Blanco, red and white Maturana or the extremely rare
Monastel grape. He is a staunch advocate of old vines, traditional vineyards and Viñedos Singulares, Rioja’s new singlevineyard category (see ‘Panel tasting’, p66).
Pedro Balda, who works with the duo and gained his PhD in minority grapes with Martínez de Toda, says that they are each very different.
‘While Martínez de Toda is a true gentleman and a brilliant mind, Sancha is a tireless worker and a man of action,’ Balda explains. In their own ways – Martínez de Toda in academic circles and Sancha within the wine industry – both men have championed sustainable viticulture (environmental and economic sustainability), encompassing the challenges posed by climate change, and the need to preserve varietal and genetic diversity in Rioja’s vineyards in order to produce distinctive wines with a sense of place.
One of these wines is Peña el Gato, a Garnacha that Sancha produces from a hundred-year-old vineyard grown by Martínez de Toda at 650m in Badarán, a village near to Baños del Río Tobía. They practise what they preach. AC
‘Sancha is a staunch advocate of old vines, traditional vineyards and Viñedo Singular’