Herdade do Mouchão

It is no exaggeration to say that we have been interested in this great estate since we began importing from Portugal over a decade ago. However, we were only recently able to taste their wines and connect the dots between the press accolades, their iconic status in Portugal and the wines themselves. It turns out that the oldest active winery in the Alentejo, beloved of luminaries as diverse as Jancis Robinson, Sarah Ahmed and Hugh Johnson, makes not just the world-class reds we were hoping to find, but stunning, seriously age-worthy whites as well. Their methods are entirely traditional, down to foot-treading in lagares and prolonged aging in barrel and bottle. Only in their adventurous approach to trellising in the vineyards do they show a tendency to modernity. A bit of history is in order here : originally (and continuously) a cork harvesting farm, they planted vineyards in the mid 19th century, bottled their first vintage in 1949 (after selling wine in every other kind of container previously), were expropriated by the government after the 1974 revolution (and returned to the Reynolds family 11 years later), and finally got electricity in 1991. Although most of their wines are a blend of grapes, Alicante Bouschet, brought to Portugal late in the 19th century and first planted at Mouchão, dominates the upper-end bottlings and reaches its highest expression here. In virtually all areas - age, history, status, and adherence to tradition - Mouchão is akin to López de Heredia. We are immensely proud to have this new “éminence grise” in our portfolio, to cast a benevolent gaze on the younger Portuguese stars whom you all already know so well.

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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.