Italian wine groups withhold 2026 harvest forecast after climate extremes fracture the vintage

Italy’s 2026 grape harvest is showing how hard it has become to describe a single national vintage in a country facing uneven climate conditions from one region to the next.

Accounts from 12 wineries across Italy point to a harvest shaped by heat, drought, localized rain, and different vineyard responses, with some producers reporting healthy fruit and strong quality while others describe losses, early ripening, and difficult decisions in the field. The fragmented picture has become so pronounced that Assoenologi, Ismea, and the Italian Wine Union, known as UIV, decided this year not to issue their usual harvest forecasts and instead wait for final figures after the picking is complete. The groups announced that decision on July 29, saying growing climate variability can cause major changes in estimates made before the harvest ends.

That uncertainty matters beyond the farm. Without an early national outlook, wine producers, buyers, distributors, and other beverage businesses face less visibility on how much wine may be available and how quality may vary by region. The growing focus on water and soil management also points to where producers may need to invest if they want to protect future supply.

The wineries’ accounts help explain why a single national forecast has become harder to produce. In the Colli Orientali del Friuli, Mirko Degan, winemaker at Meroi, described the year as early, limited, and dry. Harvest there began on Aug. 18, the earliest date the winery has reached, and the combination of heat and lack of water caused what the company said was a significant loss.

In Valpolicella, the assessment was almost the opposite. Maddalena Pasqua di Bisceglie of Musella described the harvest as exceptional, fast, and clean. In Lucca, Mina Samouti of Fattoria Sardi said temperatures gave the season a tropical character, but quantities remained balanced and quality was good. In Sicily, Giovanni Ascione of Centopassi summed up the year in one repeated word: difficult.

Several wineries said the 2026 season also showed that broad rules are becoming less useful once growers begin making decisions parcel by parcel. At Avignonesi in Montepulciano, near Siena, the harvest started with a strong sense of urgency after weeks of intense heat, but some Merlot parcels were left on the vine until Sept. 22. Alessio Gorini, the company’s chief operating officer, said the season was disorienting, contradictory, and selective. In more vigorous valley-floor vineyards, the winery found it more useful to wait for cooler conditions than to follow the general early pattern of the season.

The lesson, Gorini said, was not simply to harvest later. It was to avoid automatic decisions and keep reading each parcel until the last days of picking. A similar approach emerged at Collemattoni in Montalcino. Marcello Bucci said the winery left more fruit on the vine and delayed green harvesting. According to company data, nearly 200 millimeters of rain in August helped the vines get through the heat, and the longer hang time helped keep alcohol levels under control. Bucci said, however, that the same strategy could prove wrong in another year.

Many of the responses to heat are now centered on canopy management. At Fattoria Sardi, workers did very little trimming, leaving more vegetation to shade both the vine canopy and the fruit. The winery also split harvesting into several passes within the same vineyard to follow uneven ripening. Iviti Winery in Cortona has been working for years on winter and green pruning and sees canopy management as a key issue for the next several years. Avignonesi reported similar concerns, with sunburn and fruit shriveling caused by heat pushing the winery to rethink cluster exposure, leaf area, and the overall canopy structure.

At Podere Mastrilli in Impruneta, near Florence, Adriano Zago said the season’s high temperatures still produced ripe and balanced fruit because water reserves had built up through May and June. The winery kept leaf walls in place to protect clusters and used grass cover to limit evaporation and soil overheating.

Soil came up repeatedly in the wineries’ accounts. Antonella Villa and Luigi Barban of Verzure, which operates between Murlo and Montalcino, said they had not introduced new techniques and still aimed to intervene as little as possible. But they identified soil fertility and water management as two crucial conditions for making vines less vulnerable. At Ampeleia in Maremma, Marco Tait pointed instead to biodiversity in and around the vineyard as part of building a more complex farming system.

Those views are in line with research priorities in Italy. CREA, the national agricultural research body, has identified cover crops, green manure, and restoring organic matter as practices that can improve fertility, root health, and the soil’s ability to retain water while also supporting biodiversity below the surface.

Water, however, does not mean the same thing everywhere. For Meroi, the main concern for the coming years is simply securing enough of it. Fattoria Sardi argues that water can no longer be treated only as an issue for individual estates and must become a matter of territorial management. In Ogliastra, Perda Rubia said it had intensified monitoring and refined irrigation doses based on vineyard conditions. The International Organisation of Vine and Wine, or OIV, views water management as a system that begins with vineyard design, including the combination of variety and rootstock, training methods, soil practices, cover crops, green pruning, and crop load.

Plant material is becoming another major area of adaptation. L’Antica Quercia in Conegliano is carrying out a massal selection project using vines more than 70 years old. Claudio Francavilla sees genetic diversification as a tool to address vine failures and preserve a less uniform plant heritage. In Friuli, Degan said Ribolla is a variety worth watching after its performance in 2026 and put research into rootstocks, planting density, and heat-tolerant varieties on the same level of importance.

Avignonesi also sees rootstocks as a necessary area of research, especially for new plantings, but warned against treating new material as a reason to uproot productive 20-year-old vineyards. Gorini said native grape varieties should also be studied for their ability to retain freshness and acidity. In Ogliastra, Mario Mereu of Perda Rubia is looking at own-rooted vines. The winery plans to reintroduce them for Cannonau and use them for Semidano based on what it has observed in its vineyards. Mereu said native varieties remain one of the territory’s main resources and that Cannonau is versatile enough to allow styles beyond its traditional use as a red wine.

For some producers, the question starts with site selection. Pasqua di Bisceglie of Musella said vineyards located in places made less suitable by new climate conditions may eventually have to be removed. She also pointed to an expected increase in organically farmed acreage. In Sicily, Centopassi is already gradually moving its vineyard assets to higher land and has sharply reduced trimming, avoiding it where possible.

Not every climate-related response is about heat and drought. In Conegliano, L’Antica Quercia installed anti-hail nets on a small parcel for the first time. The nets were not needed this year, but damage in previous seasons persuaded the winery to consider extending that protection to other plots.

The faster pace of ripening is also creating organizational pressure. At Centopassi, heat and rain brought many vineyards to maturity at nearly the same time, reducing the chance to spread the harvest over a longer period. In a few suitable parcels, the winery used a mechanical harvester to shorten timing. Perda Rubia also relied significantly on machine harvesting in Ogliastra, citing not only the need to work quickly but also growing difficulty in finding labor. The winery still harvests by hand the grapes used for its Perda Rubia wine, but now considers mechanization necessary for part of its production.

Zago of Podere Mastrilli said the next phase of adaptation will not be only technical. He said wineries will also need teams able to make decisions quickly, revise plans, and work more independently when conditions change in the vineyard.