A recent arrival, the 2021 Cabeças do Reguengo Vira Cabeças Tinto, is one of our top red wine discoveries in the past year and is a sensational overachiever. A field blend sourced from multiple pre-phylloxera vineyards at 1,800 to 2,000 feet in Portalegre, Alentejo—one of the few regions in southern Portugal that escaped the shift to mechanized viticulture following the fall of Salazar. The rugged, high-altitude terrain preserved its ancient mixed-planted vineyards, allowing for wines with Alentejo’s richness but with northern-like minerality and freshness. João Afonso, founder of Cabeças do Reguengo in 2009, employs regenerative farming with minimal soil disturbance and minimal vine treatments. This cuvée, emphasizing Trincadeira for lifted aromatics and precision, ferments in traditional open-top fermentation vats called lagar with partial stem inclusion before aging for about 18 months in used 225L French oak barrels. The result is a structured yet elegant wine, balancing deep complexity with the energy of its mountain terroir. This has beautifully high-toned aromatics like that of a refined red Burgundy, along with impressive fruit, mineral drive, and elegance. It's a serious bottle for the money from one of Portugal's most hidden gems, and we have some of the only bottles currently available in the USA.
John Gilman 94 points! "João Afonso’s small estate in the Portalegre section of Alentejo is home to some of the oldest, pre-phylloxera vines in all of Portugal. His Vira Cabeças Tinto is made from a field blend of these very old vines, planted at seven hundred meters elevation and many of the vines are over one hundred years of age. This cuvée is fermented in lagar and raised in older Bordeaux barrels for eighteen months prior to bottling. The 2021 Vira Cabeças Tinto is an absolutely superb follow-up to the 2019 version, which I tasted last spring. The wine delivers a beautifully deep and very complex bouquet of black cherries, dark berries, a touch of Ribeira Sacra-like sweet botanicals, stony minerality, pigeon, bonfire, raw cocoa, a touch of anise and cedary oak. On the palate the wine is deep, complex, full-bodied and nicely structured, with a superb core of fruit, impressive mineral undertow and grip, ripe tannins and a long, complex and seamlessly balanced, young finish. Like its 2019 counterpart, the 2021 Vira Cabeças Tinto tips the scales at an even thirteen percent octane. This is another simply beautiful wine in the making from João Afonso! It will demand some cellaring to soften up, but it is going to be superb. (Drink between 2034-2075)"
2021 Cabeças do Reguengo Vira Cabeças Tinto
2021 Cabeças do Reguengo Vira Cabeças Tinto
A recent arrival, the 2021 Cabeças do Reguengo Vira Cabeças Tinto, is one of our top red wine discoveries in the past year and is a sensational overachiever. A field blend sourced from multiple pre-phylloxera vineyards at 1,800 to 2,000 feet in Portalegre, Alentejo—one of the few regions in southern Portugal that escaped the shift to mechanized viticulture following the fall of Salazar. The rugged, high-altitude terrain preserved its ancient mixed-planted vineyards, allowing for wines with Alentejo’s richness but with northern-like minerality and freshness. João Afonso, founder of Cabeças do Reguengo in 2009, employs regenerative farming with minimal soil disturbance and minimal vine treatments. This cuvée, emphasizing Trincadeira for lifted aromatics and precision, ferments in traditional open-top fermentation vats called lagar with partial stem inclusion before aging for about 18 months in used 225L French oak barrels. The result is a structured yet elegant wine, balancing deep complexity with the energy of its mountain terroir. This has beautifully high-toned aromatics like that of a refined red Burgundy, along with impressive fruit, mineral drive, and elegance. It's a serious bottle for the money from one of Portugal's most hidden gems, and we have some of the only bottles currently available in the USA.
John Gilman 94 points! "João Afonso’s small estate in the Portalegre section of Alentejo is home to some of the oldest, pre-phylloxera vines in all of Portugal. His Vira Cabeças Tinto is made from a field blend of these very old vines, planted at seven hundred meters elevation and many of the vines are over one hundred years of age. This cuvée is fermented in lagar and raised in older Bordeaux barrels for eighteen months prior to bottling. The 2021 Vira Cabeças Tinto is an absolutely superb follow-up to the 2019 version, which I tasted last spring. The wine delivers a beautifully deep and very complex bouquet of black cherries, dark berries, a touch of Ribeira Sacra-like sweet botanicals, stony minerality, pigeon, bonfire, raw cocoa, a touch of anise and cedary oak. On the palate the wine is deep, complex, full-bodied and nicely structured, with a superb core of fruit, impressive mineral undertow and grip, ripe tannins and a long, complex and seamlessly balanced, young finish. Like its 2019 counterpart, the 2021 Vira Cabeças Tinto tips the scales at an even thirteen percent octane. This is another simply beautiful wine in the making from João Afonso! It will demand some cellaring to soften up, but it is going to be superb. (Drink between 2034-2075)"
