El3mento is a partnership wine between Luis Pedro Cândido da Silva and Carmelo Peña Santana, that since they met each other in university, they had a dream to make wine together. After 5 years of planning and designing the wine, El3mento was born in 2017 from a centenary vineyard at 600m of altitude in the area of Barcos - Tabuaço in the Douro Valley.
The second El3mento was made in 2019, a dry year in the valley, with rain showers when the plant most needed them, was a perfect agricultural year, with medium high productions and very healthy grapes, picked on the 23rd of September and on the same day selected and processed into a 1000L clay amphora, whole bunch and lightly foot stomped.
Fermentation was spontaneous, and maceration pos-fermentation was from September 2019 to May 2020 – 8 months, a very high risk process, and that’s why el3mento is not released every year.
In May 2020 the grapes were pressed to a stainless steel vat, where the wine stayed until April of 2021, when it was bottled without any adjustment, filtration, whatsoever.