Herdade do Rocim

Subregion: Vidigueira

Address: Estrada Nacional 387 Apartado 64 7940-909 Cuba Alentejo Portugal

GPS: 38º 11’ 50.0”N 7º 51’18.6”W

Team: Pedro Ribeiro, Catarina Vieira, Pedro Pegas

Phone: +351 284 415 180

Email: herdadedorocim@herdadedorocim.com

Passionate supporters of the talha revival, Herdade do Rocim’s dynamic husband-and-wife team, Pedro Ribeiro and Catarina Vieira, have accomplished a great deal of very good things over the last decade. Exporting various forms of talha wine to thirty countries on five continents, they have helped place both Alentejo and talha wine on the global wine map. Along the way their smartly cast brands have introduced thousands of younger drinkers to fresh, clean, consumer-friendly wine, made (implausibly to some) in ancient earthen-ware pots.

Equally important, they’ve drawn wine tourists into the heart of talha country through their annual Amphora Wine Day, showcasing clay-made wine from around the world sitting alongside St. Martin’s Day’s freshly minted, local talha wines.

Beyond producing Vinho de Talha DOC wine, Rocim have expanded the stylistic horizon of what talha technology is capable of creating, through brands focused on clay-aged, natural and amphora designations, topping all this off with a premium’s premium 1000 euro talha wine, called Jupiter. After selling out in a few days, this became the most expensive clay-made wine anywhere on earth, proving clay can compete with the world’s top conventionally made wines.

The forty-something couple are university trained in wine and manage Rocim together as equal partners. Ribeiro is focused more on winemaking and promotional globetrotting, with Vieira overseeing the vineyard and keeping the winery’s doors open.

The original Herdade do Rocim 120-hectare estate was purchased in 2000 by Terralis Lda, a Portuguese agricultural machinery company intent on regenerating the vineyards and building a state-of-the-art winery. This included a traditional twenty-hectare, field-blended, mixed-variety vineyard, Vinha do Olho de Mocho. Seventy-five years old now, this has proved an important core of production.

Originally conceived to produce modern technologically driven wines, the vineyards have seen a steady planting program over the last twenty years expanding up to seventy-four hectares, with another thirty hectares rented elsewhere. The bulk of this is in local Portuguese grapes (Aragonez, Trincadeira, Moreto, Tinta Grossa and whites Antão Vaz, Rabo de Ovelha, Perrum, Roupeiro and Mantuedo), but also includes French varieties: Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, Tannat and Petit Verdot. Northern Portuguese white grapes have also been added over time: Arinto, Verdelho, Viosinho and Alvarinho. All of this provides lots of material to play around with either as modern, conventional single varietal and multi-blended wines or newly evolved traditional styles.

In 2015 they added Vinha de Micaela, a tiny (.36 hectare) 80+ year-old vineyard from a neighbor, planted in Moreto, Tinta Grossa, Trincadeira, Alicante Bouschet and various other grapes. They’ve gained organic certification for some vineyards and most recently the whole property achieved Alentejo’s official sustainability certification.

So good grape growing no doubt plays a huge role in the quality and qualities of Rocim’s wines.

Vieira studied in Portugal and Italy, learning both modern and traditional vine management, ‘always trying to understand different kinds of viticulture, different philosophies, looking for more than the usual. There are no new concepts without knowing so well the old ones.’ For her, ‘the beauty is to combine the new concepts with the old ones, improving of course quality and always respecting the terroir.’

Whereas new vineyards were planted in respect to how they fit into Rocim’s terroir, the older vines in Vinha do Olho de Mocho or Vinha de Micaela were maintained in traditional growing practices. Vieira says, ‘exactly the same way, with minimal intervention.’ Noticing differences between the old vines versus the newly planted ones she observed, ‘the old vines gave us more complexity, deepness, an excellent balance and volume.’

Vieira believes that the grapes common around Cuba, Vidigueira, Frades and Vila Alva are ‘very well adapted to talha vinification. The talhas promote more freshness, softer tanins, ….We pick the grapes earlier than is usual in the region, we believe the acidity is very important in this kind of wine.’

A new winery was built in 2007 in front of the original Herdade do Rocim’s ancient farmhouse and adega. Designed by an award-winning Portuguese architect, Carlos Vitorino, it was constructed along energy-efficient, ecologically friendly lines. Stealthily positioned, half-submerged into the terrain, it is graced by superb panoramic views of the surrounding vineyard slopes. Its sunken cellar and rammed mud wall surround a glassed-in central courtyard with an internal amphitheater - as stunning as it is sustainable.

Packed full of modern winemaking’s state-of-the-art technological toys: stainless steel everywhere, French oak barrels, large conical concrete tanks, etc. it also has a full complement of traditional Portuguese wine tools: marble lagars for foot treading, talha and small 140-liter clay maturation jugs. The ‘new’ old Portuguese technology is now a tried-and-tested natural progression beyond conventional ‘modernist’ winemaking. Producing about a million bottles of wine now, over 40,000 are made in clay.

And then, around 2010, Rocim began shifting its attention towards Alentejo’s traditional winemaking technologies, grape blends and vineyard practices. The young team started seriously thinking about talha wine.

Historically the old original Herdade do Rocim’s talha wines were highly respected throughout the region, suggesting the marriage between vineyards and its original adega were capable of something special. And so when Rocim returned to talha winemaking in 2012, production was restored to the old adega behind the modern complex. Strengthening the re-connection, they turned to Rocim’s viticulturist, Pedro Pegas, to make the first wines. Originally from Vidigueira, he had learned the art of talha from his 80-year-old father, and has been central to the winemaking team since.

Rocim’s first modern talha wines came from the quinta’s original, field-blend vineyard. This had been replanted from an earlier vineyard in the same local mixture, connecting it back to the early 20th century and possibly even further back: reds, Aragonez 50%, Trincadeira 30%, Moreto 10%, Tinta Grossa 10% and whites, Antão Vaz 40%, Perrum 20%, Rabo de Ovelha 20% and Mantuedo 20%. Fittingly, this was Rocim’s oldest, purest terroir.

Since then, both red and white ‘amphora’ wines have been traditionally made following Vinho de Talha DOC guidelines: unsulphured, made with whole clusters, all stems and skins left to ferment and macerate for two months until St. Martin’s Day, then certified and bottled.

I have followed these wines for several years now and they are consistently among my favorite talha wine: fresh, purely fruited, with a degree of elegance and remarkably modern in style. What every human, by right, deserves to drink every day of the year. Which when it comes right down to it, is the essence of talha wine.

This runs true for most of Herdade do Rocim’s other talha styles (clay-aged, natural, amphora and Jupiter), which are generally fresher, cleaner and quite appealing to modern tastes.

Part of this is accomplished via approaching talha as a technology rather than a strict adherence to a concept of tradition. Aiming for a purer interaction between wine and clay, they don’t line with pés, to avoid any added flavors and aromas. Similarly, they don’t protect the wine’s surface from oxidation with an added layer of flavor-filled olive oil, opting for a floating silicon disk instead.

I recall Ribeiro once mentioning, with an ironic wink, that ‘traditionally there was more variability in how tannins were managed in the past, by adjusting skin contact.’ Alas, because current DOC regulations require photographic evidence of grapes contained in the talha after St. Martin's Day, this is no longer possible. Countering that requires diligence and close attention to how well the wines are evolving.

Beyond their talha DOC wines, Rocim make ‘Fresh from Amphora’ natural wines, with less intervention, no added chemicals and at lower alcohol of 11.5%. It is uncertified DOC because they remove it from skins immediately after fermentation to preserve fresher fruit characters. They come in larger 1-liter bottles and are what they suggest: fresh, fruity and highly quaffable.

In many ways Rocim have grabbed the baton following in Jose de Sousa’s footsteps, playing around with talha and lagar fermentation and substituting clay maturation for oak barrel conditioning.

The first of these projects was their ‘aged in clay’ wines. These were foot-trodden in large stone lagars, then left in them to fully ferment, and thereafter moved into small 140-liter jug-shaped pots to mature. These replaced conventional oak barrel ageing with the advantage of not infusing the wines with oak flavors, aromas and bitter tannins. Beyond their relative neutrality, they burnish the wine's textures with micro-oxidation at about twice the rate of wooden barrels. This results in purer fruit characters and softer textures.

The wines use northern Portuguese grapes: Verdelho, Viosinho and Alvarinho. Whereas the reds were originally built around Alicante Bouchet and Trincadeira, with French grapes Petit Verdot and Tannat. They eventually traded in the French for a Portuguese grape with a French name, Touriga Franca. Quinta da Pigarca use barrel-shaped clay vessels to produce a similar style of wine.

Pedro Ribeira also produces talha-made wine outside the Rocim range. His own Bojador brand is Vinho de Talha DOC but produced from rented vineyards in Vidigueira. Blends change according to the seasonal variation with whites kept on skins for five months and reds an additional one or two. And from further afield he makes Santiago na Anfora do Rocim, a very polished Alvarinho from its homeland, Moncao e Melgaco, in the Vinho Verde region.

But the most spectacularly successful of these experimental projects is Jupiter. Originally destined for Rocim’s baseline Vinho de Talha DOC range, when Ribeiro first tasted this wine he realized it was the best wine he’d ever made. Instead of bottling, he moved the wine to a cleaned talha to age longer. Checking it religiously for any decline in quality, instead the wine only got better. After an unheard of four years in talha it was finally bottled. Priced at 1000eu Jupiter sold out within days. Not only Portugal’s most expensive wine ever, but the most expensive clay-pot-made wine from anywhere, ever. Jupiter managed to knock the ball out of the stadium in terms of what clay-made wine could accomplish.

Sometimes it takes someone from the outside to see what is most special about a place. Ribeiro and Vieira, both from other parts of Portugal, have done just that, embracing the essence of what makes this part of Alentejo unique in the world. Their love for what they have found has inspired them to take that message out into the greater world for the betterment of talha culture and their community.