Harvest Season in Canelli 2026

Villa del Borgo

Alessandro on the harvest season in Canelli 2026 and an earlier than expected grape harvest

The Harvest is Here — and This Year, It Arrived Early

I have watched the vendemmia (Italian word for the annual grape harvest used to make wine) come and go from these hills for many years now. Each one is different. Each one has its own character, its own rhythm, its own small surprises. But this year, 2026, has been one of the more unusual ones — and I mean that in the best possible way.

The harvest arrived early. Earlier than we expected, certainly earlier than the calendar suggested it should. And if you had been standing on our terrace in the last days of August, watching the vines on the slopes below Canelli, you would have understood why. The grapes were ready. The colour, the weight of the bunches, the way the leaves had already begun to turn — the vineyard was telling us something, and the best growers in this territory listened.

This is, in the end, what the vendemmia has always been about. Not a date on a calendar, but a conversation between the vine and the person who tends it.

Why the Moscato Came First

The grape that has made the most noise about the early harvest this year is, perhaps appropriately, the one that has always had the most to say for itself. Moscato Bianco, the queen of our hills, has been ready and waiting since before many of the other varieties had even begun to think about it.

This is not entirely surprising. Moscato is one of the earliest-ripening varieties in the Piedmontese calendar, and in a year like this one — warm nights in July, generous sunshine through August, a summer that seemed to decide it had made its point and could begin to wind down — the conditions were simply perfect. The sugars accumulated quickly. The aromas, that extraordinary perfume that has been drawing people to these hills since the Romans called it uva apiana, the bee grape, developed early and with an intensity that had the growers smiling.

What an Early Harvest Means

There is a persistent myth that an early harvest means a lesser wine. I would like to take this opportunity to put it firmly to rest.

What matters is not when the harvest happens but whether the grapes were ready when it did. An early harvest in a year where the conditions have accelerated ripening naturally and gently is, if anything, a sign of a very good vintage indeed. The vine has had everything it needed. The winemaker has not had to wait and worry and hope the weather holds. The grapes have arrived at the cellar in the best possible condition.

What the winemaker does next is, of course, another story entirely. And that story will take some time to tell. But the beginning of this year’s chapter, at least, looks very promising.


The Vendemmia as Experience

There is something I want to say to anyone reading this who has not yet witnessed a harvest in person.

It is one of the most extraordinary things you can see. The vineyards in these weeks have a different quality to them — busier, more purposeful, filled with a particular energy that is hard to describe but immediately felt. The air changes. The light changes. Even the sounds change: the hum of machinery on the larger estates, the quieter work of hands on the more traditional plots, the voices carrying across the hillsides in the early morning.

Canelli sits in the very heart of this territory. The Langhe and the Monferrato, recognised by UNESCO as a World Heritage landscape in 2014, stretch out in every direction. And in these weeks of harvest, every direction offers something worth looking at.

If you are here during the vendemmia, and I hope some of you will be, do not spend all your time indoors. Walk into the vines. Ask the growers what they are seeing. Taste something straight from the bunch if they offer it. There are very few experiences in the Italian calendar that match what these hills offer in September and October.

A Note on What Comes Next

The Moscato is in the cellar. The other varieties are following, each in their own time. Barbera, Dolcetto, and eventually, on the highest and most patient plots of the Langhe, the Nebbiolo that will one day become Barolo and Barbaresco — perhaps the most celebrated wines in all of Italy.

It will be months before the full story of the 2026 harvest can be told. Possibly years, for the wines that need the most time. But I can tell you that from where I am standing, on a hillside in Canelli at the end of a remarkable summer, it looks like a very good story indeed.

Come and taste it for yourselves. The cellar doors are open, the glasses are ready, and the hills are at their most beautiful right now.

Alessandro
Relais Villa del Borgo, Canelli

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