Climate and the Calendar: When Harvest Starts in July

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On July 15, Marie Valette began picking Muscat à Petits Grains at Domaine Champ des Sœurs in Fitou, in the Aude. It was the earliest start to a French grape harvest on record, ten days ahead of the previous mark, set in 2022, according to Atelier du Vin. A week later, Domaine Lafage in Roussillon began its own earliest-ever harvest, reported The Drinks Business, after a budburst about fifteen days ahead of normal. In 2026, the climate change wine harvest stopped being a forecast.

French growers once marked the end of summer with the vendanges. In parts of the south they now begin in midsummer.

The climate change wine harvest calendar

The 2026 dates read like a list of broken records. Juvé & Camps in Penedès picked on July 27, which Winecap called the region’s first July harvest in more than a century. Muscadet started on August 11, eight days ahead of its 2003 record. Champagne’s official calendar opened on August 8 in Montgueux, beating the 2020 record of August 17. In Burgundy, Domaine Leflaive’s start on August 13 marked the earliest harvest since 1556.

Behind the dates is heat. Atelier du Vin, citing Météo-France, reports that French spring 2026 was the warmest since 1900 and that July averaged 24.9°C, 3.8°C above normal, making it the hottest month ever recorded in France. “We are at least ten days ahead of 2025, which was already very early,” said Sébastien Debuisson of the Comité Champagne.

Northern Europe moved too. Nyetimber in West Sussex began picking on September 14, its earliest start since planting its first vines in 1988; the previous record was September 19, 2018. “This year brings another unprecedented vintage as we begin harvesting earlier than ever,” head winemaker Cherie Spriggs said. Hattingley Valley in Hampshire planned its first ever August harvest; recent vintages had begun between September 9 and 24. In Germany, the German Wine Institute reported picking under way in the second week of August, a week ahead of the five-year average.

Why an earlier harvest changes the wine

In a climate change wine harvest, the picking date is more than a scheduling matter. When grapes ripen in the heat of August rather than the cool of late September, flavour forms differently. Warm nights burn off acidity. Sugar, and therefore alcohol, can outrun the ripening of tannins and aromatics. Grapes that ripen under a lower sun and cooler nights tend to make the taut, aromatic wines on which the classic regions built their reputations.

So the question is not only how to pick earlier but how to slow the vine down. Growers are working on several fronts:

• Canopy and vineyard: more leaf cover to shade fruit, cover crops, shade cloth and, in Piedmont, trees planted among the vines.
• Plant material: later-ripening clones and rootstocks. In Beaujolais, Les Vins Georges Duboeuf is searching the SICAREX conservatory of more than 1,000 Gamay selections for vines “with a later vegetative cycle”, deputy general manager Adrien Duboeuf-Lacombe told The Drinks Business.
• Place: moving up and north. Familia Torres planted at 950 metres at Tremp, in the Catalan Pyrenees foothills, and has land at 1,200 metres in Benabarre for the future. “We have to adapt – sometimes by changing grape varieties, but sometimes by planting higher,” Miguel Torres Maczassek told Decanter.

Rewriting the rulebook

The most significant shift is regulatory. France’s appellation system was designed to fix tradition in law: which grapes, where, how. It is now being loosened to allow adaptation.

Bordeaux’s six new grapes. In January 2021, the INAO approved four reds (Arinarnoa, Castets, Marselan and Touriga Nacional) and two whites (Alvarinho and Liliorila) for Bordeaux and Bordeaux Supérieur. They were chosen from 52 candidates for drought tolerance and late ripening, and are limited to 5% of an estate’s vineyard and 10% of any blend. Touriga Nacional, the backbone of the Douro, is the most telling choice: a Portuguese grape now permitted in claret. (Santé’s Wine A-to-Z series covers the Douro and Port in depth.)

Champagne’s Voltis. The disease-resistant hybrid Voltis was accepted into Champagne’s rules as a “variety of interest for adaptation”, capped at 5% of vineyard area and 10% of any cuvée, with a permanent decision not due before 2032. Its first harvest came in October 2025 from about 80 growers working 8.9 hectares, reported JancisRobinson.com. For more on how Champagne works, see our Wine A-to-Z.

Irrigation. Long close to forbidden in fine-wine France, irrigation is now on the INAO agenda after a summer of emergency permits in Bordeaux; its national committee has approved a working group to assess sustainable irrigation as a tool for climate resilience.

The pattern is the same everywhere. New varieties come in under strict caps, with a review date, so that typicity is protected while growers test alternatives. Bordeaux and Champagne are not abandoning their identity. They are trying to make sure it survives.

Winners, losers and a new map

There is a hard truth beneath the records: the warming that threatens freshness in the south is making regions in the north viable. English sparkling wine, once marginal, now ripens Chardonnay and Pinot Noir with some regularity. Rob MacCulloch MW of Hattingley Valley attributes the early start to “climate change”, adding that dry conditions have produced Chardonnay “with greater concentration of flavour and aroma.” In the south, the logic runs the other way: Domaine Lafage picked its coastal Muscat in July and expected its Lafabuleuse to finish at around 9% alcohol, a style built on freshness rather than richness.

The lesson for drinkers is that vintage and place now count for more than ever. The same appellation can produce very different wines depending on whether a grower picked in early August or waited, and whether the vines are at 200 metres or 950.

Four bottles that show the new map

• Familia Torres Forcada: a white from a recovered Catalan variety, one of the forgotten grapes Torres has brought back as part of its climate strategy. Shop it at Wine.com
• Nyetimber Classic Cuvée: the reference point for English sparkling wine, from chalk and greensand in the south of England. Shop it at Wine.com
• Hattingley Valley Classic Reserve: Hampshire chalk, precise and taut. Shop it at Wine.com
• Domaine Lafage Côté Est: Roussillon white from Mediterranean vineyards, a test of how a grower keeps freshness in one of France’s hottest corners. Shop it at Wine.com