The estate Paço de Camões has been passed down over six generations of the Reynolds family. The Reynolds family first came to Portugal as cork merchants in 1820 and have been farming cork in the Alentejo ever since. Paço de Camões now belongs to Clare Pinsent, who inherited the property in 1984 from her father, Victor Reynolds, a pioneering viticulturist in the region. The estate is predominantly a cork forest and some of the oldest trees date back over two hundred years. Paço shares its name with Luis de Camões, Portugal’s most famous poet and the wines are named poems in his most literary work, Os Lusíadas. The vineyards were planted in 2001 and 2002, on predominantly schistous soils, with a combination of both traditional and non-traditional varieties (including Trincadeira, Aragonês, Alicante Bouschet and Syrah and Viognier). With only sixteen hectares under vine sustainable farming methods are practised so as to protect the local flora and fauna. These are modern European styled wines, as opposed to the rustic or heavily extracted styles of wines one so often finds from the end of the Iberian peninsular. Definitely worth trying.