Herdade do Mouchão

VS Mouchão is the oldest active winery in the Alentejo, beloved by Jancis Robinson and Hugh Johnson, and one of the rare estates whose age-worthy wines earn the over-used label of world-class. It was a cork-harvesting farm before it was a winery, and the cork harvest has never stopped. The Reynolds family planted vineyards in the mid-nineteenth century, bottled a first vintage in 1949, lost the property to the government after the 1974 revolution, recovered it eleven years later, and finally got electricity in 1991. Winemaker Iain Reynolds Richardson arrived with plans to modernize. Once he understood what made it work, he left the foot-treading and the hand-cranked presses exactly as he found them, despite methods demanding enough that simply working a press takes real physical strength (Elaine can vouch, having tried it herself). That instinct sits alongside a genuine sustainability record: FSC-certified cork, carbon audits, over 45,000 trees planted since 2018, and equal gender pay before the law required it. Alicante Bouschet was first planted in Portugal here, and here it still reaches its highest expression. In age, history, and adherence to tradition, Mouchão stands alongside López de Heredia.

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Producer:	Herdade do Mouchão
Country:	Portugal
Region:	Alentejo
Subregion:	Portalegre
City of Origin:	Casa Branca
Date Founded:	1901
Owner Name:	Reynolds Family (6th Generation)
Vineyard Size:	43 HA
Total Annual Production:	150,000 bottles

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Property History:

•Sustainably-Produced Wines - “Traditional Winemaking at its Best” (hand-picked, foot trodden, manually pressed and tonel-aged, under one of the World’s most stringent certification protocols) • Dry-farming focussed, despite and because of increasing aridity • >45,000 trees planted since 2018 (excl vines and olive trees): 24,300 cork trees, 17,000 authocthonous riparian trees and shrubs, 4,400 arbutus and 1,200 umbrella pines • FSC®-Certified, Carbon-Audited, Cork Producer, incl. the “everything in the bottle is ours” use of Mouchão cork in our fortified bottlings • >€200,000 invested in soil and water bioengineering of Mouchão’s many water courses, with technical support from the University of Évora (2023-25) • Ongoing sustainability trials with the University of Évora, covering biochar and soil erosion in vineyards and olive groves • Exemplary for our farm biodiversity, including >100 bird species identified, several endangered • Plans to grow our 30% self-sufficiency in solar energy needs • All winery and non-farm vehicles are fully electric (Portugal’s electricity production is 60-80% renewable, the 4th highest in EU-27) • We support and work closely with the local community. Labour-intensive, we also employ 18 locals on a full-time basis (casual labour can be in excess of 20 at any one time) • Workers are provided with private health insurance cover • Mouchão is widely considered to have been the first wine grower in the Alentejo to adopt equal pay for female vineyard and farm workers, before this became obligatory. Mouchão was initialy rented in the 1830's and then bought in the 1870's. The first Alicante Bouschet vineyards were planted in the 1890's and the new winery was built in 1901 (we consider this the year of establishment for the wine business, although records shows that wine was already produced before that date). 1949 is the first vintage to be bottled and 1954 is the first vintage to reach the capital with its current white & red label. The estate was exprorieted after the 1974 Revolution to be returned to the family by 1985/1986.

Owner History:

The Reynolds have arrived to Portugal in 1824, when Thomas Reynolds founded a trading company in Oporto to export Port Wine, Olive Oil, Honey and Cork to the U.K.. Short after the family heads south, to the Alentejo, and focus on the cork production, abandoning Oporto. They rented more than 100 proprieties across Alentejo and Mouchão was one of them. Today, Mouchão is runned by the 6th generation of Reynolds in Portugal.