In 2001, Josep Lluís turned 65 years old, and he took a decision that drastically changed his life: he decided to retire from the project that he had founded in 1986, Mas Martinet Viticultors, and he left it to his daughter Sara, with whom he had already worked for some years (since 1996) in the winery.

“Dad, I want to make wine, I want to make it myself” he says that his daughter told him. And he answered: “Ok, so you can start tomorrow then.” “What if I do a bad job?” Sara said. And Josep Lluís remembers that he told her: “We will throw the wine down the ravine, but you are the most important thing. You must be yourself. Therefore, I will always be there, but you must do things in your own way”. This was something difficult to accept, and even now, depending on the situation, it is still difficult for him. Because they do things in a different way, different from how he would do them, and when people ask him how he is dealing with all this, he says: “I am very happy with the way my children are working. I am really happy with it”.

His decision of leaving Mas Martinet Viticultors was a shock for him, a hurried retirement for an active character longing to work so much like him. He was getting older, and it was difficult for him to accept it, so he decided to start doing some exercise every morning. He planned his own routine with exercises which would be right for him, and he hasn’t stopped doing them since then. However, something was missing: a project to be created and worked on.

For this reason, Montse Ovejero and Josep Lluís Pérez created Mas Martinet Assessoraments. And they did it together, as they have always done, working as a team. As they had already advised some companies like Rovellats and Peralada, they decided to focus on this, and advise. However, they followed their own style, they did things in their own way. Josep Lluís has always based his work on experimenting, both in the vineyard and in the winery. Therefore, they decided to buy Cal Milionari, an old winery located in Porrera. It was a place that allowed them to do things without obstructing the activity of the winery that they left.

They started to advise with their characteristic experimental basis, and they also started to make the Degustació wine and the wine without additives. They could make comparisons with few bottles: from the vigour of the plants, from the pruning, from the making process… In 1993, from the Viticultors winery, they had already carried out 40 different vinifications, different fermentations in barrels (in order to compare the fermentation in wood, without wood, in stainless steel, with 1o days of maceration, with 2o days of maceration…). They always had the idea of learning. Josep Lluís reminds us that: “I had no idea about wines”. He tells us that they gave nearly 50% of the grapes that they produced for tasting, talking about the experiences at the school for sommeliers, or telling them to sommeliers of restaurants like El Bulli or El Celler de Can Roca.

During this period, Mas Martinet Assessoraments advised more than 30 different companies, most of them located in Catalonia and Spain, in areas like Andalusia, La Mancha or Valencia. But they also advised companies in Sweden and Egypt, which are two opposed places because they are not located in a typical vineyard territory. Their climate is, by far, much colder or much hotter.

But in 2018 this period was closed, and both parents decided to transfer everything to their children. Then, their children decided to change things, because they were not going to make wine, at least not initially. The company was born with a service objective that the children have not taken literally. Mas Martinet Assessoraments became, since then, a platform for the different projects that the siblings, Sara, Adrià, Núria and Jordi decided to start.

Initiatives related to education and experimentation, because it has always been one of the bases of Assessoraments. It is a place for all those activities developed in a rather selfless way, non-profit oriented, only for the pleasure of doing what they like and activities on which they have a special interest. And, in order to support it, there is the website www.familywines.cat, an online store for all the family winemaking projects and their wines, from both, average vintages and old vintages or special winemaking.

An eclectic organisation with the ideas, hopes and outlooks on life of the 4 siblings and, maybe in the future, of their children. A place with room for blueberry growing, which was born as a project to try to balance the agroforestry/land use management in the plots cultivated by Mas Martinet Viticultors, and a wine without additives made in Cal Milionari.

Assessoraments is now a chance to be and take risks.