My first visit to XXVI Talhas was a revelation. It was like unlocking the door to a winery that had been frozen in time for the last half-century. Now, here it was open for business once again, seemingly without having skipped a beat. That, of course, belies the fact that a lot of careful restoration and scrubbing up has taken place to achieve this state. 

This was down to a group of four childhood friends born and raised in Vila Alva: Daniel Parreira, his sister Alda, cousin Samuel Pernicha, and Ricardo Santos. Daniel and Alda’s grandfather, Daniel António Tabaquinho dos Santos, was a master winemaker who made talha wine in Adega Mestre Daniel until his death in 1985. Reopening Adega Mestre Daniel in 2018, the friends began revitalising twenty-six talha that had been sitting empty and fallow since Mestre Daniel’s death. Hence the name XXVI Talhas. 

Currently the four commute on weekends from Lisbon, where they all live and work. Daniel and Alda’s mother, Genoveva Santos, still owns her father’s adega, but it’s clear the project is a cooperative effort with everyone; extended family, friends and all, playing the best role they can, with Daniel project-managing, Alda and Samuel handling communications, and Ricardo working as senior enologist. Ricardo’s father, João Manuel Santos, handles the day-to-day winemaking in Vila Alva. In his childhood João helped Mestre Daniel at the adega, providing an important link back to unlocking talha wine secrets.

On another level, the project is greater than just talha wine. All are deeply committed to revitalising their little village (population 400) which has been losing population for decades. It’s sad to know that in 1950 Vila Alva had reached its peak of 1300 people with over 70 small and medium sized wineries and almost every household had a small talha (tareco) opened on St. Martin's Day, supplying family needs through to the next vintage.

But all has not been lost. Much of Vila Alva’s talha culture still remains hidden behind doors, like Adega Mestre Daniel, patiently waiting to come alive again.  

Currently there are at least eight adegas with over 130 talhas, still producing wine, and another fourteen adegas with over 86 unused talhas behind locked doors, many of which could return to production. This, of course, compares with the hundreds more that existed pre-20th century, when vineyard totals steadily shrank from 1200 down to present 400 hectares, but it offers up hope for the future. 

Indeed, while at XXVI, a 30-something friend from a couple of doors up the road invited me to have a look at his future project. After unlocking a large door there stood another twenty large talhas sitting, dust-covered and unused, ‘involuntarily mothballed’ just as Adega Mestre Daniel’s had been (see Potted History section). The team at XXVI Talhas are clearly an infectious lot. 

Adega Mestre Daniel’s twenty-six talhas range from 300 to 1300 liters, some dating from the 19th century. Most are made of clay, but four are made of reinforced cement, manufactured by local Vila Alva masters in the 1930s (see Talha Terroir section).

Winemaker Ricardo explained that each talha has its own dynamics with size and shape producing different wine from the same grape source. In particular, neck, collar and shoulder size and body shape determine how punch-down of the cap is dealt with, and, each factor in turn also creates different vectors for internal flow of currents within the talha’s belly from top to bottom. 

XXVI use traditional pés. Luckily, during my visit I experienced the first time the adega team applied pés to two of its larger 1300-liter talha. Feeling confident after successfully applying pés to a smaller 600-liter-talha, nine men gathered to lower seriously heavy, man-sized pots from their normal standing position. These were rolled across a floor, re-raised, head first, over a fire. After a couple of hours heating and deemed hot enough to absorb the wax, they were flipped back over and lowered down again. Resting on their bellies, they were coated internally with beeswax and pine resin, and finally repositioned into the original space ready for filling (the main image in the header shows the final wrestling of the talha back into place).

It was a smoky five-hour process involving lots of grunting, near loss of control, a fair bit of dodging, coughing, tears and triumphant cheers - nothing short of a jaw-dropping, sometimes breathtaking, experience to watch. The striking thing about this relatively rare, recently resurrected process, is it was once commonly repeated hundreds of times every year throughout this part of Alentejo, going back not just hundreds, but thousands of years. 

Because XXVI Talhas are focused ‘on stimulating the local economy and the traditional vine growing’, all the grapes come from within the Vila Alva parish. Vineyards are field blends of mixed varieties with vines aged between 25 and 50 years old. Sourced from family, friends or neighbors, all are grown without irrigation. 

Vines to the southeast (between Vila Alva and Vidigueira) are planted in granitic soils and the northwestern vineyards are planted in schist soils. The two completely different soil types and micro-climates offer up some interesting fruit choices to play around with and carefully match to differing talha types and sizes. 

White varieties are mainly Antão Vaz, Roupeiro, Mantuedo, Perrum, Diagalves, Larião, Roupeiro and others. Diagalves & Mantuedo varieties were often the latest to ripen in the past, which has become an advantage now with global warming. Red grapes revolve around Trincadeira, Roriz and, most especially, Tinto Grossa. Ricardo mentioned that Tinta Grossa has a strong local story, where villagers in Vila Alva call it ‘our grape’ because of its dominance there. Indications so far suggest it has a high clonal biodiversity locally, suggesting it has lived there a very long time.  

XXVI Talhas have three main wine styles. ‘Do Tareco’ follows the classic talha process of fermentation on skins for a couple of months, completed on Saint Martin's Day (11 November), then bottled immediately to keep it light and fresh for drinking over the coming months.

Their mainline ‘Mestre Daniel’ also follows the St. Martin's day formula, but a selection is made of the best talhas and the wine is kept on the ‘mother’ until February or March of the following year, aiming for more complexity and skin derived structure. 

The adega’s reserve is a special numbered ‘Single talha’ wine made only in one pot using the best grapes coming entirely from a single old vineyard. Produced only from a top vintage and held on ‘mother’ for 5 or 6 months before bottling, production is usually around 1000 bottles. Similar to Herdade do Rocim’s Jupiter, the point is to bottle the ultimate in terroir: grapes coming from a specific plot and season, then vinified within a highly specific clay container and matured within its parameters. 

XXVI also produce a little ‘Palhete’, a very traditional local style, that co-ferments a mixture of white and red grapes, resulting in wine somewhere between a rose and light red. Although strictly speaking mixing red and whites is not officially allowed by EU or local appellation regulations, it is nevertheless an important traditional style worth continuing. It bridges back to a time when talha was thriving in Vila Alva and people enjoyed the blend of red and whites that were growing together in their vineyards; something lighter and fresher than a red, and fuller and richer than a white. While a bit of an outlaw within a world of top-down regulation, there is a growing movement, from the bottom up, to bring back this people’s style of wine. 

All in all, XXVI Talhas are a force to be reckoned with. The adega is a hive of innovative creativity, buzzing with youthful energy and ever focused on returning their community to the prosperity and happy times it once had in the past. One can only expect even better things to come.  

XXVI Talhas Wines

White Wines

XXVI Titan do Tareco Branco 2021 

XXVI Talhas Mestre Daniel Branco 2021 

XXVI Talhas Mestre Daniel Branco Talha X 2021 

XXVI Talhas Do Tareco Branco 2020 

XXVI Talhas Mestre Daniel Branco 2019 

XXVI Talhas Mestre Daniel Branco Talha X 2019 

Red Wines

XXVI Talhas Mestre Daniel Tinto 2021 

XXVI Talhas Do Tareco Tinto 2020 

XXVI Talhas Mestre Daniel Tinto 2019 

XXVI Talhas Mestre Daniel Tinto Talha XV 2019 

Palhete

XXVI Talhas Palhete do Tareco 2020