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The forty hectares of vineyard are planted on the hilltop, which provides adequate drainage and excellent sunlight. The soil is mostly shale. The undulations of the terrain make the temperature vary hugely from night to day, which promotes the best ripening conditions for the grapes. A perfect setting for the Reynolds’ cult of growing special grapes. The main varieties cultivated are the traditional in the region: Trincadeira, Aragonez, Alfrocheiro, Arinto and Alicante Bouschet – the latter was introduced into Portugal by Robert and Jonh Reynolds, his younger brother, over a century and a half ago and it is still used as the base of Reynolds red wines.
The Reynolds Wine Growers estate is by the National Park of S. Mamede hills, near Portalegre, in the Northern Alentejo region, a place of immense beauty – five hundred acres of meadows streaked with green, gold and intense brown. The scenery there is filled with sky and hills, oak and cork trees dotted like sheep across the landscape. The farm house and the winery are amid the vineyard, which avoid a long transportation of the grapes during the harvest.
Thomas Reynolds, an English seaman and merchant, arrived in Portugal in 1820, attracted by the potential of the wine trade. He settled in the northern town of Porto with his two sons, Thomas and Robert, and from there they supplied their London store with a variety of products from the Iberian Peninsula. In 1838, they became involved in the cork industry and set up a factory for the manufacture of cork stoppers in Alburquerque (Spain), where they lived for eleven years. It was a profitable business and soon new cork factories opened in Portugal and Spain.
The family returned to Portugal in 1850 and moved to Estremoz for a short time. However, Thomas and his son of the same name were not the settling kind: stirred by the same spirit of entrepreneurship, they set sail for New Zealand, a long voyage of 130 days, taking with them a large flock of merino sheep. They never returned to Portugal.
Robert, meanwhile, had remained in Estremoz to take care of the business and soon expanded it with the purchase of new land for the production of an excellent wine, an activity for which he was particularly passionate. The Alentejo soon became the resting place in Portugal of the Reynolds family and of Robert, the family patriarch. It was here that his first son, Robert Rafael, was born, who later had a son called Carlos. Carlos’s first child was a daughter whom he named Gloria – Gloria Reynolds. To honour his mother and all his ancestors who lived in the Alentejo, Gloria’s son Julian produce a quality wine, which carries his mother’s name – Gloria Reynolds.
