2025 is turning out to be a great year for wine

Although, with a few exceptions, harvest yields reveal there won't be as much of it from the world's top wine regions, writes Elin McCoy from New York

- Elin McCoy

Grapes at the vineyards of Domaine Evremond in Chilham, southeast England. In September 2024, French wine house Taittinger inaugurated its vineyard in England, where climate change is making it increasingly easy to grow grapes.

On Aug 28 in Saint-Emilion, France, pickers fanned out into the vineyard at Château Troplong Mondot. It was the earliest harvest start in the estate's history.

Record-breaking early picking was a key feature of harvest 2025. In Alsace, the date was Aug 19; in Champagne, Aug 20; for the white grapes in the Rhône Valley, mid-August, two weeks earlier than last year. In Germany's Rheingau region, some grapes were picked at the end of August, three weeks earlier than the long-term average.

In most European wine spots, harvests were speedy too. At first-growth Château Mouton Rothschild in Bordeaux, the first red grapes came in on Sept 5, and picking wrapped up historically early, on Sept 20.

It's clear that rising temperatures and the extreme weather of climate change are compressing the growing season and shifting the harvest timetable. The good news this year is that winemakers from France to Germany to Spain (with some exceptions) are excited by the promise of high-quality wine, even though yields are lower than they would like.

For that, blame the extended heatwaves, drought and destructive wildfires that now regularly play havoc with both quantity and quality and seem to affect different wine regions around the world every year.

According to a global study released in May by two French agricultural research institutes and the University of British Columbia, wine-growing regions have warmed, on average, by the equivalent of nearly 100 extra growing degree days over the past 70 years. Growing degree days are a measure of the cumulative heat vines are exposed to, which influences growth and ripening. Europe has felt the biggest impact.