Ana & Al's Big Portuguese Wine Adventure

Alastair Leithead & Ana Leithead Spross
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Travelling Portugal, visiting vineyards, collecting stories and learning about Alentejo wine wineportugal.substack.com

  1. 05.03.2025

    Bonus Episode (8): Mouchão

    If you enjoyed our trip to the iconic Mouchão winery, and the stories Iain Reynolds Richardson told about his family’s 200 year old adventure into the Alentejo, here’s a bonus episode about their wine. Sometimes there’s just too much to cram into half an hour, so I hope you enjoy our 14 minute whiz through a wine of Mouchão’s range of different wines led by Iain and by winemaker Hamilton Reis who we met way back in Episode 4. Valley of the Bars We loved our deep dive into the Alicante Bouschet grape so much that we organised an event around it! Our new eco-luxe tourism lodge Vale das Estrelas, or Valley of the Stars, on the southwestern edge of Portugal’s Alentejo is finally ready and we’re putting wine at the centre of it all. In celebration of the French grape which the Portuguese have made their own, we invited Alicante-aficionados, winemakers and interested amateurs like ourselves to taste their way through the reddest grape. It’s easy to plunge into the weeds of winemaking, but it’s a lot harder to keep everything accessible and demystify wine a bit, and so that’s our mission. French winemaker Baptiste Carrière Pradal of Domaine de la Massole in the Languedoc – who we heard from in the episode – brought his single varietal Alicante Bouschet from his family vineyard in the same region where Henri Bouschet created the grape. The Big Portuguese Wine Adventure is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. He explained the generations of his family’s grape-growing history, the wines he now creates and how his plans to pull up the old vine Alicante Bouschet grapes hit a snag when he tried the berries and then made the wine! Iain Richardson brought his flagship Mouchão wine – the 2017 which was released at the end of 2024. He also gave us a sneaky peak into the future with a straight from the barrel sample of his top end 2021 Tonel 3/4 which won’t be released until 2035. This is a winery which makes wine worth waiting for. But as you’ll hear from this bonus episode, there are other Mouchão red and white wines ready to drink including the Dom Rafael and the Ponte. The Ponte white is 100% Verdelho – another grape Mouchão is famous for – and they even do a line in garrafeiras, or flaggons. These two litre bottles wrapped in wicker can be topped up at the winery straight from a barrel for a bargain – continuing on a tradition of make fresh, affordable wine available to the locals. We wrapped up the tasting with some fortified and lusciously sweet Tonel Aged Dessert wine from 2015...again 100% Alicante Bouschet. We were also delighted to showcase a couple of local Alicante Bouschet growers and winemakers. Diogo Ribeiro from Adega dos Nascedios brought their Alicante, as did Niels Ulmers from Quinta de Cegonha. We’ll be doing a lot more to showcase our local suppliers in the future and bring winemakers from across Portugal to our wild coast. Hopefully this – and our first event with Howard’s Folly – is just the start of a series of wine tastings and events at our lodge Clubhouse. * The best way to try these wines is to visit the wineries, or drop in for a tasting here at Vale das Estrelas, but if you’d like to order some in the interim we’ll post the details on the page soon Get full access to The Big Portuguese Wine Adventure at wineportugal.substack.com/subscribe

  2. 01.03.2025

    Episode 8: The Reddest Grape

    I love wine and I love stories, and I can’t think of a better place to find both than Mouchão in the Alentejo. And this episode takes us from Portugal across the globe to the Languedoc region of southern France, and to Sonoma County in California on the trail of “the reddest grape.” The history of Mouchão winery is intertwined with the 200 year history of the British-Portuguese Reynolds family, and the story of both lie at the heart of our latest podcast episode. The family arrived in Portugal a little late to join the fast unfolding Port rush, and instead headed south into the Alentejo to become cork producers. Over generations they lived in palaces, were spies and explorers, smuggled Jews from Nazi-occupied Europe, retained their love of fine wine...and still keep John Wayne’s gun in their chimney. They survived the vine uprooting policies of the Salazar regime, and had their land and winery expropriated for ten years in the aftermath of the 1974 revolution, but produce wine which can be laid down for decades. Today Iain Reynolds Richardson is custodian of Mouchão, and still makes wine the traditional way: hand picking, foot treading, manual pressing and then passing time in giant tonel 5,000 litre barrels. The latest release of their flagship Mouchão brand is from 2017 – their high end “Tonel 3/4" sells for hundreds of euros a bottle. The reddest grape which Mouchão brought to Portugal is Alicante Bouschet – a French teinturier variety which Portugal has made its own. Most red wine grapes have clear juice – the colour comes from the skins – but a few run red. The Big Portuguese Wine Adventure is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Their history dates back to 1824 Montpellier when Louis Bouschet crossed two grapes to create Petit Bouschet. His son Henri continued the work cross-fertilising different grape varieties until he combined Petit Bouschet with the Spanish grape Garnacha and called it Alicante Bouschet after the city. French winemaker Baptiste Carrière Pradal of Domaine de la Massole explains how in the mid-1800s, a lot of French wine was being produced intensively for daily consumption and lacked colour. Everyone started to grow a little Alicante Bouschet to blend in to made weak coloured wine look stronger and better. Baptiste approached a gifted parcel of Alicante Bouschet with caution until he tried it, loved it and now produces a single varietal wine from it! And Morgan Twain Peterson of Bedrock wine company in Sonoma, California tells the backstory to why Napa was 40% Alicante Bouschet in the 1920s and 30s and how prohibition actually increased the area of vineyards. But the grape’s Big Portuguese Wine Adventure began in 1882 when William Reynolds was leading Portugal’s fight against the phylloxera bug which was destroying Europe’s vineyards at the time. Studies at Montpellier University into Monsieur Bouschet’s red-juiced variety presented some hope the grape could be immune to attack, and so cuttings were brought to Mouchão and experiments began. Sadly it wasn’t immune to the bug, but the grape thrived in the heat of Alentejo in a way it hadn’t in France. In the 1990s there were perhaps only 100ha of Alicante Bouschet in Alentejo, but today there are 8,000ha...and as famous international wine critic Jancis Robinson explained...that was mostly down to Mouchão. It’s now a favourite of Portuguese winemakers. The reason we visited Mouchão is traced back to one stupid question I asked every Alentejo winemaker we have met so far: “what’s your favourite grape?” and “what’s your favourite winery?” Thanks for reading The Big Portuguese Wine Adventure! This post is public so feel free to share it. In a country of 250 indigenous grapes, you’d be amazed just how many came back with the answers “Alicante Bouschet” and “Mouchão.” We hope you enjoy our latest adventure, and look out for our even deeper dive into Mouchão’s wine which is coming soon. Get full access to The Big Portuguese Wine Adventure at wineportugal.substack.com/subscribe

  3. 21.12.2024

    Episode 7: Tell it how it is

    What do Jimmy Hendrix, Elton John and Queen Elizabeth II all have in common? They all used to enjoy a glass of Mateus Rosé when it was one of the world’s most popular wines in the 1960s and 70s. Elton sang about “getting juiced on Mateus”, Jimmy Hendrix was photographed drinking from the bottle, and we understand the Queen preferred to use a glass. The distinctive bottle design was based on a Portuguese First World War water canteen and it took the name and image of a local palace. Not convinced, the manor’s owners took the option of a one-off payment for the rights, rather than a share of the profits...something they’ve no doubt regretted ever since. Rosé hasn’t traditionally been a popular drink in Portugal, so it’s outsiders it appeals to – even if that is now starting to change. The story of Mateus Rosé and the giant Sogrape empire began during a Port wine crisis at the height of the second world war and continues to this day. Mateus Rosé is still Portugal’s biggest wine export, with a bottle being sold every 90 seconds...and the story is always at the heart of it all. And the stories of wine and winemaking are also at the heart of Ana & Al’s Big Portuguese Wine Adventure. The Big Portuguese Wine Adventure is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This podcast season is all about Alentejo, so Episode 7 heads deep into the vineyards and cork forests to visit Sogrape’s beautiful new Herdade do Peso winery in Vidigueira – home to one of the most recognisable and popular Alentejo wines. The black-pig-on-an-orange-label is called Trinca Bolotas, or “acorn muncher” reflecting the importance of the porco preto pigs which live off acorns in the savannah-like plains, known as montado in Portugal and dehesa in Spain. As I wrote in a BBC article on Why Cork in Making a Comeback, it’s a biodiverse landscape of cork, holm oaks and olive trees where black Iberian pigs snuffle acorns, deer and wild boar roam the shrub alongside the cattle, sheep and goats that graze the interwoven pastures. The ecosystem sustains the endangered Iberian lynx, and threatened Imperial and Bonelli Eagles, but it's also a man-made landscape which has thrived for hundreds of years on the proceeds of cork. The yellow labelled Sossego shows the image of a giant holm oak and its name means the nostalgic feeling of tranquil calm that’s often associated with the Alentejo. Herdade do Peso’s imagery gives us a good excuse to join the cork harvest and meet the axe-wielding men who roam the countryside every summer, prizing precious cork bark from ancient trees. Half the world’s cork is produced in Portugal, where a third of the world’s cork trees grow – most of them in Alentejo. The cork industry is big business, and so we visit Amorim – the world’s largest cork producer – to discover the many different uses of cork and how new technology is creating new materials and removing the “cork taint” which can leave fine wines “corked” or tasting cardboardy. I’ve written more about it in a previous despatch: Herdade do Peso produces a range of wines – from the popular Trinca Bolotas to fine estate wines such as Revelado, Reserva, Parcelas and Ícone which sells for more than €100 a bottle. We visit at harvest time to see how the winery uses a combination of gentle-giant picking machines and traditional singing hand-pickers to strike a good balance of efficiency and quality. And we meet winemaker Luís Cabral de Almeida who won the coveted Revista de Vinhos winemaker of the year title in 2023. I hope you enjoy the latest episode of Ana & Al’s Big Portuguese Wine Adventure. There are more in the pipeline, and next episode we’ll be heading to the winemakers winery: the iconic Mouchão, to learn about a French grape which Portugal has made its own. Thanks for reading The Big Portuguese Wine Adventure! This post is public so feel free to share it. Maybe you’re reaching for a bottle of Mateus Rosé again this Christmas, but why not also try something a bit different...try some Trinca Bolotas and maybe munch some Alentejo acorns instead! Happy holidays one and all. A&A Get full access to The Big Portuguese Wine Adventure at wineportugal.substack.com/subscribe

  4. 08.06.2024

    Episode 6: Under the Lake

    Welcome to Episode 6 of Ana & Al’s Big Portuguese Wine Adventure and a story woven through so many layers of history it’s hard to know where to start. The boulder fields around the World Heritage city of Évora - in the heart of Alentejo wine country - give the name to one of Alentejo’s most famous and famously expensive wines. Thanks for reading The Big Portuguese Wine Adventure. The podcast’s free: please share it. It’s also on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Pêra Manca which means “wobbling” or “rolling” stone, is made in only the finest years and it sells for hundreds of euros a bottle But the name “Peramanca” dates back centuries. In the year 1500, bottles of the already famous Évora regional wine were said to be on board explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral’s ship when he landed in Brazil. The winery producing the latest iteration of Pêra Manca is called Cartuxa, (pronounced Car-TOUSH-ah) which is at the centre of this story. For decades the silent presence of an ancient order of monks has guarded Cartuxa’s most precious bottles in a dark dusty cellar beneath a lake. We were lucky enough to spend a couple of hours in the Santa Maria da Scala Coeli monastery - a name meaning “Stairway to Heaven.” It’s now closed to visitors, but we toured a place built in the late 1500s for the Carthusian monastic order which was founded by an 11th century saint. You can read much more all about St Bruno of Cologne, and the link between Green Chartreuse, Charterhouse schools, the Rolling Stones and the Stairway to Heaven in this previous article. But we’re here for the wine. Pêra Manca was a name which would have been doomed to obscurity had it not been for the Count of Vill’alva. Vasco Maria Eugénio de Almeida – Count Vasco de Vill’alva – was the last heir to a family fortune and the founder of the Eugénio de Almeida Foundation in 1963. He fell in love with Évora, the Alentejo and the monastery his grandfather had bought in 1871, and it was just one of the historic buildings he restored in the city. He even invited the Carthusian monks back for the first time since the Portuguese dissolution of the monasteries in 1834. The Big Portuguese Wine Adventure is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. The foundation runs programmes for arts and culture, scholarship and support and puts profits back into the foundation. It supports the farming community mostly through grape and olive planting and owns Cartuxa. That’s the connection: the reason that bottles of Pêra Manca languish under the monastery lake. Cartuxa has 600ha of vineyards and produces a whole range of wines from its Monte de Pinheiros winery which gives its name to the “entry level” brand. Cartuxa’s most well recognised bottles are labelled “EA” taking the initials of the foundation, but their whole portfolio of wines include Cartuxa branded wines, Scala Coeli (taking its name from the monastery) right up to Pêra-Manca reds which sell for hundreds of euros a bottle. Made from the same blocks of the same two Portuguese grapes Aragonez and Trincadeira, the wines are only produced if they’re good enough to hold the historic name handed over to the foundation in 1987 by descendants of the Casa Soares family. The characteristic label is adapted from a famous 18th century advert. I haven’t tried it yet – but here’s the story of a vertical tasting from someone who has. If you can find one and afford one let us know what it’s like! I hope you enjoy this episode’s dip into a different part of Portuguese history. We’d love to know what you think about our podcast, and please help us spread it by rating it and sharing it with your friends. See you next time, A&A Get full access to The Big Portuguese Wine Adventure at wineportugal.substack.com/subscribe

  5. 01.06.2024

    Episode 5: Staying Roman

    Hey there are welcome to Episode 5 of Ana & Al’s Big Portuguese Wine Adventure. This episode we take an even deeper dive into Portugal’s Roman history through Torre de Palma - a wine hotel built on the remains of a Roman winemaking villa. Mosaics discovered by archaeologists at Torre de Palma are now being protected at the National Museum of Archaeology in Lisbon. Portugal loves to celebrate its many layers of history and so we begin this story at a Roman reenactment festival in Beja, the capital of the Lower Alentejo. We meet a real life Roman soldier, a god of wine, tour a beautiful wine hotel and its cathedral of a cellar and plunge into the story of two families with similar ideas…separated by nearly two thousand years of history. And after figuratively plunging into Alentejo’s winemaking so far in the series, this time we literally plunge into it…up to our knees in fermenting grapes to crush them underfoot. I’ve already written about Roman winemaking history and our adventures at Torre de Palma, so rather than repeating it all, please have a read (once you’ve listened to the episode). We do a wine tasting with head winemaker Duarte de Deus (whose last name means “of God”) and try a Tinta Miúda grape. He says it “gives freshness to the red wines – it gives the salt and pepper to that special wine, you know, that special touch. It's really elegant.” And there’s even a connection to Luís Duarte - one of the former Esporão winemakers we met in Episode 2. The Big Portuguese Wine Adventure is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. He designed the vineyard, choosing the grapes and setting up the winemaking. If you haven’t heard that episode yet do have a listen. Thanks so much for following our journey - please tell all your friends about us and of course you can find this podcast series in all the usual places. And don’t forget to check in here to see the bonus content we post each week for a deeper dive into that week’s wine, winery or story. See you soon, A&A Get full access to The Big Portuguese Wine Adventure at wineportugal.substack.com/subscribe

    Episode 5: Staying Roman

  6. 29.05.2024

    Bonus Episode (4): Talha with a twist

    I love talking about talha or amphora wine - it’s one of the most exciting and popular winemaking techniques in the Alentejo. It’s natural wine, it’s gastronomic, and it works well with the traditional Alentejo foods like black pork…but it doesn’t taste like regular wine. Talha has an earthiness about it and is often quite heavy - like a lot of wines from Alentejo have traditionally been. But everyone here wants to make some wine in a clay pot - that’s why the ancient vessels are so hard to get hold of! And so winemakers are using talhas as one of the tools of their trade along with barrels and stainless steel vessels - to give certain tastes and flavours to their wines. That doesn’t mean they all throw their whole field-blended harvest, stalks and all, into an amphora and leave it there until November 11th.For this week’s bonus episode we’re being bundled into a car by Gerações de Talha’s Teresa Caeiro who took us to a talk we just couldn’t miss, while celebrating the opening of the talhas in Vila de Frades (Friars’ Town). For this week’s bonus episode we’re being bundled into a car by Gerações de Talha’s Teresa Caeiro who took us to a talk we just couldn’t miss, while celebrating the opening of the talhas in Vila de Frades (Friars’ Town). She took us to Natus - a fabulous small collection wine produced by Hamilton Reis…whose day job is head winemaker at Mouchão where we’ll be heading later in the series. He explained how it took him so long to come up with the perfect use for his talhas and about his passion project. Have a listen! The Big Portuguese Wine Adventure is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. We hope you like it - please tell your friends to subscribe for the podcast and the extra weekly bonus episodes we put out there if the episode is of particular interest. Get full access to The Big Portuguese Wine Adventure at wineportugal.substack.com/subscribe

  7. 25.05.2024

    Episode 4: Going Roman

    One of the hottest trends in Portuguese winemaking is using amphorae clay pots - just like the Roman’s did two thousand years ago. In Portugal they are known as talhas, and it’s the way people in Alentejo have been making wine for generations - fermenting field-blended grapes in ancient clay vessels to produce young wines. In the town of Vila de Frades (Friars’ Town) they claim to have been making it this way - constantly - since Roman times The clue’s in the title of course…the monks had a thirst for it and the nearby monastery was built on the site of a Roman villa and vineyard. And Vinho de Talha has its own DOC geographical classification (Denominação de Origem Controlada), even though it can be made in various parts of Alentejo. Thank you for reading The Big Portuguese Wine Adventure. This post is public so feel free to share it. We’re taking a similar, broader approach this episode by basing our story around Vila de Frades in Vidigueira rather than just at one winery. I’ve written quite a bit about talha winemaking over the last couple of years, so here are a few links to articles for you to read at your leisure. It’s tough to find a talha that’s less than a hundred years old as the skills to make them and the kilns to fire them have been lost. Vila de Frades is a small, typical Alentejo town with different coloured barras around the buildings – yellows and blues and reds. There’s a little walkway in the centre of town, lined with orange trees which were in blossom when we visited. The Big Portuguese Wine Adventure is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. There are talha cellars throughout town and on the corner of the main road is the Interpretative Centre which is a beautiful modern museum. The other country famous for its amphora wine making is Georgia (the country, not the State!), but there they call them qvevri - and bury them. The museum has bottles that you look through for videos and to smell a wine, there’s a table with two overhead projectors. We met the mayor of Vidigueira, Rui Raposo, who explained why he wants talha wines to be given heritage status by UNESCO...as happened with Cante Alentenjao singing, which you’ll also hear this episode. We visit Gerações de Talha – a small winery set up by Teresa Caeiro who gave up a career in diamond mining to return to her roots for love and to make wine with her grandfather Prof Arlindo Ruivo. They have a few different wines including Natalia and Farrapo and she explains the whole process - including the story of “the mother and the son”. We tour ROCIM with winemaker Pedro Ribeiro who champions amphorae and whose latest wine sells for €1000 a bottle. We had dinner and did a blind wine tasting at O País das Uvas which has a "Cella Vinaria Antiqua (Historical Wine Cellar)." Ruben Honrado is managing partner of Honrado Vineyards and he gave us a wine tasting with a difference – a blind tasting where we drank from black glasses and were challenged to tell red wine from white, and talha wine from more regular blends. We hope you enjoy the episode - it’s one of our favourite stories so far. A&A Get full access to The Big Portuguese Wine Adventure at wineportugal.substack.com/subscribe

  8. 23.05.2024

    Bonus Episode (3): Wine Class

    We packed so much into our third episode on the Plansel winery - new wine grapes, why every new grape plant must be grafted on to an American rootstock…and the great story of Jorge Bohm, Dorina Lindemann and three generations of winemakers. But one of the things we wanted to tell you more about was their international wine school, and so that’s the topic for this week’s bonus episode. It’s a basic introduction to wines and wine tasting, so if you’re already an expert please skip straight on to our next episode where we dive deep into the Roman history of Portugal’s wine. The Big Portuguese Wine Adventure is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. While immersing ourselves in the wines of Alentejo, we’ve been trying to improve our broader wine knowledge, and so signed up for an online course with the Wine & Spirits Educational Trust (WSET). I’ve written about it more detail before - here’s an introduction to the course we joined…and to three grapes you may not have heard about before. Once Dorina Lindemann heard about it she scolded us for not trying all the international grape varieties and wines and so invited us along to Plansel for one of the courses Wilmy Matum was running. She’s a Dutch wine exporter and qualified trainer and was hosting a group of students from all over the world for her course. In this bonus episode she tells us all about WSET, about why the description of wine needs to be standardised and what she teaches here in Portugal. The wine school is on hiatus at the moment, but if you’re interested in applying for a course, you can email: wine-school@plansel.com Please let us know what you think of the podcast series so far - and the bonus episodes we’re dropping. We’d love to know what you think? And in the next episode we’ll be diving deep into Portugal’s Roman history of wine. Thanks for following our adventure! Please spread the word… A&A Get full access to The Big Portuguese Wine Adventure at wineportugal.substack.com/subscribe

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