When are grapes harvested for wine?

In the northern hemisphere the harvest falls in late summer and autumn, with September and October as the busiest months.

In Beaune, in Burgundy, the harvest has begun on average on 15 September since 1988. In Alsace, riesling used to be picked in the first two weeks of October; nowadays that more often happens in the first week of September.

Within a country it varies. Warm regions in the south finish earlier than cool regions in the north, and white grapes usually go before the red ones of the same estate.

In the southern hemisphere the harvest falls in the first months of the calendar year, half a season shifted compared with Europe.

Wine Australia estimated the Australian harvest of 2026 at 1.27 million tonnes, the smallest in more than 25 years. When that figure became known, the European harvest of that same year had yet to begin.

The same rhythm applies to Chile, Argentina, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. A year on a bottle from those countries refers to a harvest early in that year.

The moment of harvest is determined by measurements on the grape: the sugar content rises, the total acids fall and the pH climbs.

Research into the effect of climate on viticulture follows exactly those three values, because together they determine what is possible in the cellar. In addition, attention is paid to the ripeness of seed and skin, because that is where the colour and the tannin are.

The weather also has a say. Rain just before picking or a threatening mould attack can make a grower start days earlier than planned.

The harvest date follows the temperature of the growing season, and that differs greatly between northern and southern wine regions.

The vine goes through the same stages every year: budbreak, flowering, véraison and harvest. The warmer the season, the faster those stages follow one another. In Alsace it has been measured over seventy years that budbreak moved forward by 10 days, flowering by 23 days and véraison by 39 days.

Altitude, slope and the proximity of water shift this further. Two plots in the same village can be a week apart.

In Beaune the harvest began on average on 28 September between 1354 and 1987, and thirteen days earlier between 1988 and 2018.

The series from Beaune runs over 664 years and is the longest continuous series of harvest data that exists. The researchers call 1988 the turning point: warm and dry seasons were exceptions before that and have become the rule since.

The OIV reports that the weather in both hemispheres depressed the size of the 2025 harvest, the third year in a row with a small worldwide harvest.