Mouchão

The Reynolds family’s story at Mouchão in northern Alentejo has roots in Thomas Reynolds’s arrival in Portugal in 1824 and the family’s later work in the cork trade. The winery was built in 1901, the first estate wine was bottled in 1949, and the Mouchão label followed with the 1954 harvest. After expropriation in 1974, the property returned to the family in 1986 and was restored for the sixth generation.

Vines occupy a small part of the roughly 900-hectare estate, where Alicante Bouschet grows on parcels of alluvial, gravel and clay soils. For the red wines, hand-picked grapes are foot-trodden in open stone tanks called lagares, then basket-pressed and aged in large, seasoned wooden vats.