Helena Isabel Ferreira Manuel, graduated in agricultural engineering and business management and postgraduate in Olive Growing and Olive Oil by Évora University. Always inserted in the viticultural world, by the family branch where her grandparents were already winegrowers and where she always participated in the winemaking work in the Lisbon region, she started working with a wide variety of crops in the Alentejo in 2003, passing through technical assistance in olive groves and dried fruits, in the region of Moura and Beja, teaching classes at the polytechnic institute of Beja in the same branch and giving hundreds of hours of agricultural training to farmers and technicians throughout the country, by mere chance returned to the origins of vineyard in 2011, where she was responsible for the entire development of a new project, Hacienda Branca, from the planting of the vineyard to the construction of the winery as well as the entire general management of the company Hacienda Branca/Quinta do Paral.
In 2015 she was invited to manage a larger project, Herdade dos Lagos, in Mértola, where she has since been responsible for its operational management, putting into practice daily concepts of organic, regenerative, permaculture and syntropic agriculture in the daily management of vineyards, olive groves, carob pastures, forests and sheep production and where the safeguarding of water resources and biodiversity are imperative.
