Height, heritage and heat- Exploring the wines of Jumilla

Hi everyone and welcome to our Hyde Heritage and Heat Exploring the Wines of Humilla webinar. I am David Martín and I am based at our WCT head office in London. My main role here is to support our approved program provider network in the EMEA region. As many of you probably know, the Wine and Spirit Education Trust is the world's leading provider of qualifications in wine, spirits, sake and beer. The WCT team has over 50 years of experience in designing and delivering education to help professionals and consumer enthusiasts to learn more about these products. We can take WCT qualifications in over 70 countries throughout a network of more than 800 course providers. If you're interested in finding out more about embarking on a WCT journey, visit wctglobal.com. I would like to remind you that this webinar will be recorded and available to watch via the WCT Global Events Hub on YouTube. Please feel free to post your questions in the Q&A box and we will try to cover as many as possible at the end of the session. Before I introduce our speaker today, I would like to ask you a couple of questions. Please, if you can, answer them in the chat. So, have you heard about Jumilla Wines before? And if so, what is your perception about Jumilla Wines at the moment? We are looking forward to your answers. So today our wine expert is Carolina Martínez-Origone. She is the director of Jumilla PDO Wine Council. Carolina is an agricultural engineer graduated from the Polytechnic University of Madrid and holds a Master of Science in agri-food marketing from the International Centre of Advanced Agronomic Mediterranean Studies in Zaragoza. She has experience in agri-food research studies and her main expertise is related to geographical indications. She has held positions in the European Commission and in the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture dealing with wine geographical indications. Since 2017, she is the director and general secretary of the Jumilla PDO Regulatory Council. Ever since, she has worked with the aim of modernising this historic wine region with a firm belief in the potential of its wines and the distinctive features of the land. Carolina, welcome and thank you very much for joining us today. Hi, thank you David. Thank you very much. Thank you everyone who is seeing this webinar. I'm very excited to to be able to show you some light into our amazing wine region. Excellent. So, okay, first of all, why this title, Height, Heritage and Heat? Some of you may ask yourself. Well, this title appeals to the singularity of Jumilla wine region. Height, because this region is located at a very remarkable altitude compared to other Mediterranean wine regions where Monastrell or Muvedre is grown. And this is something that you can then feel in our wines. Heritage, this region, people in this region have been growing vines and making wines for millennia, over centuries, so they know what they're doing, I can say. And this heritage is also natural heritage because we are very lucky to hold the biggest surface of Monastrell and old vine Monastrell in the world. So, we can proudly say that Jumilla is the kingdom or republic of Monastrell in the world. And Heat, because this is a very arid region with very hot summers. But despite the heat, we can assure balanced wines with high alcohol content in many cases, but very balanced in terms of freshness, acidity levels, and so on. Okay, so after this short explanation on our title of Height, Heritage and Heat, just a quick glance at where is Jumilla located for those who don't really know much about this region. This is a map of Spain. You can see where the region is located. It's a wine region that straddles two Spanish regions, the Castilla-La Mancha region and the Murcia region. So, we are located in southeastern Spain, but inland, 100 kilometers away from the Mediterranean Sea, and less than 300 kilometers away from Madrid, from the capital. So, it's a short drive from the coast, less than an hour, and an around three-hour drive from Madrid. The region has seven villages, which is not much, but these villages, some of them are very big, such as the village of Jumilla and the village of Bellin, which are very big in terms of territory, of surface. Seven towns, six of them located in the province of Albacete, in Castilla-La Mancha region, and one in Murcia region, which is Jumilla, giving the name to the whole population. Here, we can see a quick glance at the main facts that I would like you to know about Jumilla, so that you know the general view of the Appalachians. It was established in 1966, so it's one of the oldest wine regions in Appalachians in Spain. It has roughly 20,000 hectares of vineyard, around 1,400 wine growers, 38 wineries certified by our control board. In terms of markets, 2025, a little bit over 17 million bottles sold worldwide, being our main market, Spain, with 35% of sales staying here in Spain, and over 65% of wine being sold over to more than 90 countries worldwide. Our main markets are high value markets, such as the US, Canada, Germany, the UK, and Japan. Now, more into the real title words that you saw, height, heat, and heritage. This is all linked to terroir, right? Terroir is that unique combination of landscape, of climate, of soils, of vines, and the human factor. So, heights and landscape, why is this so important for Jumilla? This area is located at a very remarkable altitude, high altitude plateau, as I said before, one hour inland, 100 kilometers inland from the coast. So, our vines are located from, they go from roughly 350 meters above sea level, and they can go as much as 1,000 meters elevation. So, this range of altitude is really, this diverse range of altitude is really interesting to ensure swift and smooth ripeness of our grapes during the summer days, and balance in both grapes and in wines. However, most of the vineyard is located between 608 meters above sea level, which is a remarkable altitude, as I said before. As you can see in the picture, our landscape is one of rugged landscape, wide valleys and plains, and surrounded by rolling hills, which can go up to almost 1,400 meters, which is quite high, given the fact that we're close to the Mediterranean. All these mountain ranges, what we call sierras, are part of the pre-Vedic mountain range that, you know, go from south Spain, from Sierra Nevada mountain range until, and they go from the Mediterranean, the Balearic Islands, and even south of France. One thing I would like to highlight about the diversity and the altitude of the landscape in Pumilla is the importance of shade. As you know, in other latitudes, south-facing slopes are very important for ripeness. Well, in our case, it's just the contrary. We are very keen on shaded vineyards on north-facing slopes because they receive at least 20% less of solar radiation, which is key to be able to ripen the fruit smoothly and ensure balance in the grapes. Something about height and soils that I would like to mention is something that is also quite interesting for Pumilla, is that it's a very diverse region in terms of soil geology. You know, in Spain, we have regions which are very more uniform, say, such as, say, for example, Priorat, which many of you may know, and the soils are mostly slate soils, or in Cebereros, or they are granite, or Galicia, it's granite. But in our case, its diversity in terms of geology is huge. However, there's this common denominator, which is calcareous and limestone material. The bedrock of our mountains is mainly limestone. We have gravel soils of calcareous material on slopes, and more sandy soils also of material linked to limestone on the lower parts of the foot. We also have these exotic little spots of volcanic areas where some vineyard is grown. In fact, we have a couple of volcanic wines in the region, which are very distinct and singular. Textures are frequently sandy and loam. And two main facts about the importance of Pumilla soils. One is that they're normally deep soils. This is great for the vines to be able to, through their roots, explore deep down our soils and achieve the necessary humidity levels they need to grow, and the nutrients they need to grow. And also, these soils have medium to high available water holding capacity, which is also very, very, very important in this region with some little rain, because the little rain that falls is able to be stored during the scorching days of summer. So, this helps our vines thrive throughout the year. We also have, as you can see some of the soil pits here, the pictures. We have many frequently petro-calcic horizons, which are these cement layers of carbonates that can be helpful when they are not too thick, and provide this cooling vessel effect that keeps the moisture and the coolness deep down for the roots to be able to thrive in summer. In terms of climate, as I mentioned before, this is a very arid area. All the southeast of Spain is quite arid. We have little rainfall, or a little under 300 millimetres of rain per year. But there is this continental influence as well, given the fact that we're inland and high altitude. And this continentality is very important for the balance and freshness of our wines compared to other regions closer to the sea, where they grow similar grapes such as us. This is a windy area, also key to maintain the vineyard healthy and out of problems with pests. And we have refreshing morning fogs during the summer days, which is also helpful for the vineyard. And it's a very, very sunny area. In terms of heritage, and I would like to focus on the natural heritage, because history could go on another long webinar, but I would like to talk about natural heritage, is the fact that we have 20,000 hectares of vineyard. This, to give you a clue, this is like half the size of Cot de Ron, or one third the size of Riojas vineyard. But the yields here are way, way lower. See here in the slide, they're under three kilos per vine. In very old vines, they are even less, one kilo per vine. And we have the, we're very lucky to have more than 20% of the vineyard considered old, over 30 years old, many of which is Biafranco and grafted, so that Vitis vinifera rootstock, over 1000 hectares of Biafranco vines. This is mainly a wine, a red wine region. 95% of the grapes are red varieties, and only 5% is white. But off the overall surface, Monastrell is clearly the queen of the vineyard here, with over 73% of the vineyard being Monastrell, or Muvedre, as you may know by the French name. Of course, we have other varieties in terms of red and white varieties, but Monastrell is clearly the most important. Sorry. The type of horticulture practice here is very traditional, in general. We have, most of our vines are gobelet root vines, or bush vines, as others call it. It's all dry farming, mostly dry farming. We have some irrigation for white varieties, or for other trellished varieties, but mainly everything depends on rain. The density of the plantings is very low. They're normally very far away from each other, so that they can have their own amount of water for each other, and not compete between each other. We have the natural ideal conditions for organic farming, and over 75% of the vineyard is certified organic, and other certifications such as DIMETER for biodynamics. It's a very sustainable viticulture, what we do here. It's very low in inputs, just some animal manure every two, three years. No irrigation, as you can see. No chemicals, no preventive treatments. So, very sustainable in terms of environment, and which meets the demand for environmentally conscious products. And now, let's talk about our queen grape, as I said before, which is clearly Monastrell, or Murvetre, as you know it. This is one of the most important Mediterranean grape varieties in the world. Anjumilla has this amazing heritage of being the reservoir, the world reservoir, for Monastrell in the world. And 25% of world Monastrell is located here in Jumilla wine region. It's definitely the variety best adapted to our growing conditions, to our terroir. It is climate change resistant. It can resist heat waves, droughts, which, by the way, we have suffered for three years. Very severe drought, which luckily ended last fall. And it's a long cycle, late budding, late ripening variety, which is perfect for this type of climate that we have in Jumilla. And as I said before, the continental component of being inland and high altitude ensures that our wines have these good acidity levels and show freshness and are able to produce balanced wines. And Monastrell has shown, has proven to be a very versatile variety, especially in the last years. Producers have been able to show this versatility of Monastrell. Many of you may think of Monastrell as a more rustic, jammy or overripe variety of wines, but no, this is not the reality right now of Monastrell in Jumilla. It can show young, very fruity wines and also aged reds, but also peeling process and the very special sweet wines. As I said, we have the, we're lucky enough to have an amazing amount of old vines in Jumilla. Most of these old vines are, of course, Monastrell. Some of them are also Airene and Garnacha Tintorera in Spanish, what you know as Alicante Bouchet abroad. Many, many of these, or most of these old vines are unrafted, so Pie Franco, their own rootstock, no rafts whatsoever. And it shows such an amazing adaptation to the, to the conditions in our, in Jumilla, in our soils. It's adapted to, for example, this high active carbonate contents that many other varieties would never be able to survive without the grafts of commercial rootstocks, right? And this is the production structure of the, of the Jumilla Appellation. So most of our wines, 90% of the wines produced today are red wines, which, as I said, they are, they're, they're diverse. We have this versatility with Monastrell and with our other red varieties that can produce from bright, vibrant and oaked fruity wines to more chalky texture and elegant and complex wines. We also have Rosés, 4% of the production goes through Rosés, of course, mainly Monastrell Rosés, which are crisp, which are fresh, which are fruity. We have upcoming, the whites are growing, of course, thanks to world demand, but also because producers have also worked very well with their varieties, such as indigenous varieties, such as Airene, with upcoming premium wines that you may know from diverse, from different wineries in the region, which are now some of the top white wines in Spain. And then we have this little 1% of sweet wines made with Monastrell wines that are very special. There are amazingly balanced sweet wines with a freshness and an acidity that really, really, everyone who tries them is really astonished by the, by the complexity and the balance they show in, in the palate. So yes, Monastrell and Jumilla wines can show deep depth, complexity, intense fruitiness and convey the Mediterranean character of this land and their history. And last but not least, I will, I would like to show you the, the last vintages qualifications that we have for our wines, which, well, this translates into the international acclaim that Jumilla has gained throughout the last years with recognition in the international wine scene. And we're, as you can see here, where the last five vintages have been either excellent, 2020, 2021, 2022 were excellent, then 2023 and 2024 were very good, despite the severe drought I mentioned before. 2025, we still haven't qualified it yet. The wines are, many of them, most of them are still in the making, right? Especially red wines, whites and roses are, most of them are ready, but our red wines are most of them still in the making. But what I can tell you is that the last vintage, 2025 vintage, we saw the end of the drought coming, but there were some hail episodes and long heat waves that made production levels plummet. And actually the last two vintages, 2024 and 2025, were the record lowest vintages in terms of production in the history of the Appalachian. But despite that, they were very good in 2024 and we'll see in 2025 what's the result we'll see in the next months coming. And this is a bite-sized webinar, so I could go on and on talking about Jumilla wines, but I hope this was a good small pill about our wines and I hope you enjoyed it and anything you want to ask. We have now a moment for Q&As, right David? Absolutely, yes. Thank you very much Karina, it was very interesting. I just want to say that Jumilla is a spectacular area. If you have the chance to go there, don't miss the opportunity. I was very lucky to be there last year with Karolina and her team in the first edition of the educator program for Jumilla wines and the hospitality, the food, the wines are spectacular. So don't miss the opportunity to pop into Jumilla and the villages around and try their wines, they're spectacular. So yeah, we have a couple of questions, let's say for Karolina. So Oscar is asking how would you compare the influence of terroir expression of Monastrell from Jumilla to the same variety from Dio, Monzan or Dio Empordà in Catalonia? But you mean for Monastrell or...? He's asking for Monastrell. So how would you compare Monastrell and Jumilla with the same variety in those other regions in Catalonia, Monzan and Empordà? Well, first of all, from what I know, the amount of Monastrell in these two regions is quite small compared to other red varieties they grow there, such as, I don't know, Carignan or Repat or other red varieties. But what I know about Empordà and Monzan is that they are closer to the sea, especially Empordà, and Monzan is also closer to the sea and lower in altitude. So I would say that Jumilla's Monastrell probably ensures higher acidity levels thus then and therefore the balance is made, I don't know, I don't want to sound, to say anything wrong about these other two regions, which are colleagues and I love their wines as well, but probably our Monastrell is the most balanced Monastrell, not just in Spain, but in general, given this inland and continental component and high altitude that other regions don't have. Thank you, Carina. And I think the last question, because we don't have much more time, comes from Erican. She's asking, regarding the vintage 2023-2024 were impacted by severe drought, how is the Jumilla Dio supporting producers in maintaining a consistent international style and quality level for the global market, despite these increasingly challenging climatic variations? Very good question. And well, this is really something that these past three years of severe drought has driven much attention. First of all, in the field, so as to how to treat, how to grow or manage, sorry, the vineyard and growers have been especially attentive to the ripeness of the fruit. They have had to collect the grapes before so as to avoid dehydration, over ripeness. They have been looking for northern, north-facing slopes, shaded vineyards, as I mentioned. They have also been very careful with pruning so as to shade the most of the vines, which is kind of easy in this area, given the monasterial erect growing way. And then in the wineries, well, of course, some of them have had to, say, age less the wines in some ways, so release the wines earlier because they were ready before, if you may understand what I mean. And maybe these vintages are not the ones with the most aging potential. So that's something challenging for growers and for winemakers. But what we have learned these hard years is that monasterial is really the main ally we have in the region, because it's surely the one variety that has proven the most consistency, the best adaptation to these very hard conditions that we had these last three years, yes. Excellent, thank you. I think I have time just for going quickly through a couple of questions. Rizma is asking for what sort of technique is used for sweet monasterial wine? Okay, I couldn't get much into detail. These wines are fortified wines. These are wines that are, the grapes are collected very ripe, not racing, but very overripe grapes in the last, in November, in the days of November are usually collected. They are overripe normally in the plant. It's not that you collect them and then hang them like in other areas. You collect them already overripe and dehydrated, and this very sweet must goes into fermentation. And then at one point, the fermentation is cut to adding alcohol, wine alcohol, of course. And then, of course, you have this residual sweetness, natural sweetness from the monasterial grapes. And they are normally around 16 percent alcohol content and around 200 grams of sugar per liter. But the good, the very amazing thing and very gastronomic appeal of these wines are there, that despite being sweet wines, of course, is that they are very, very balanced. And I know can agree with me because they are fruity. There's this acidity that cleans your palate, despite the sweetness, of course. So they are very interesting for food pairing, not just as dessert wines, but also with one, with some amazing pure cheese, like a manchego cheese or a blue cheese or a foie or, of course, jamón ibérico. They're indeed amazing wines. I have the good luck of tasting them with you in Jumilla. They're spectacular. They're difficult to find, at least in the UK. I don't know in your countries. But if you have the chance to try them, don't miss the opportunity. They're spectacular. And the last question before we close today is, do you produce blanc de noix in Jumilla? Good question. Well, last year, last year, no, no, the vintage, 2024 vintage, we saw the first blanc de noix produced in Jumilla, which surprisingly, for many of you, was not a Monastrell blanc de noix. It was a Petit Verdot blanc de noix from Bodegas Bleda. And I invite you all to try it because it's quite unique to have a blanc de noix made from Petit Verdot. And we do authorize in our appellation, of course, the making of blanc de noix. And who knows, we will probably see more blanc de noix, probably from Monastrell in the future. Yes. We'll keep an eye. So looking forward to see them here. So yeah, and I think we have to finish now. So thank you very much, everybody, for watching. Please, I say, I hope you have completed the feedback poll that we showed you some time ago in Jone's Cream. So that is very important for us. Thank you very much, Carolina, for your presentation. Just to say that this recording will be available to watch at the WCT Events Hub on YouTube. And you can catch up on all our previous events there. To find more information about our qualifications, you can find our Where to Study page at WCTglobal.com. Thank you. I hope you find a good Jumilla for today, for this afternoon. Thank you all. Bye-bye.