Herdade do Mouchão

Herdade do Mouchão started life producing cork. As one of dozens of estates owned by Thomas Reynolds & Sons, whose business exported Port wine, olive oil, wool, honey and cork to England, it wasn’t until the early 1890s that the Roberts family built a house and agricultural buildings on the estate. In 1901, the “new” winery was built, from which the family produced wines sold in bulk—a practice that continued until 1949, when wine was bottle on the estate, leading to the debut of the Mouchão label with the 1954 vintage. Today, the estate is still family owned and operated, with 45 of the estate’s 900ha planted to vine, primarily with Alicante Bouschet which thrives in the hot and dry Alentejo climate, along with a variety of other native red and white varieties. Wine making is traditional: grapes are hand-picked and foot-trodden, with basket presses used for reds, open stone lagares and century-old wooden vats used for fermentation. The wines are elegant, steep in tradition, and made in a way that preserves their terroir.