South Tyrol's wine lovers can rejoice: this year's grape harvest not only starts around a week earlier than usual, but also promises to lay the foundations for an outstanding 2025 vintage. Despite a cool July, the vegetation has a head start, allowing the winegrowers to start harvesting as early as the end of August - a clear sign of a special wine year.
Andreas Kofler, President of the South Tyrol Wine Consortium, is extremely confident. The vines are currently in excellent condition. The entire growing region has been spared major storms such as hailstorms this year, and vine diseases have not been a problem either. These ideal conditions give us hope for healthy, high-quality grapes as the raw material for next year's wines.
Stable yields and high quality expected
It is not only the quality of the grapes that is giving South Tyrolean winegrowers cause for optimism, the expected harvest volume is also positive. According to Kofler, yields are in line with the average of recent years. Only individual grape varieties, such as Gewürztraminer in some regions, are expected to yield slightly lower quantities. However, this does not cloud the positive overall forecast. At higher altitudes, the head start in vegetation is even more pronounced, which will lead to an even earlier start to the harvest there.
Although the grapes are not yet in the cellar and the decisive weeks are still to come, the South Tyrolean wine industry is looking to the future with hope. The winegrowers are now keeping their fingers crossed that the last phase before the harvest will also pass without incident and that nothing will stand in the way of a promising 2025 vintage.
