Aosta Valley, Bovard: viticulture and our work are set to change
Nicolas Bovard, president of the Wine Consortium, says: extreme weather events, drought and the simultaneous ripening of different grape varieties risk undermining the work of the wineries
“The grape harvest began on 11 August and ended in mid-October.” Nicolas Bovard, aged 30, chairman of the Valle d’Aosta Wine Consortium - 48 member wineries representing around 97 per cent of the region’s DOC wine production – sums up in a few words what 2026 was like for the region’s wine industry. A tangible sign of climate change or, at the very least, of an unusual vintage characterised by scorching temperatures and low rainfall: a combination that put the wineries of the Aosta Valley.
“In the past, the grape harvest never began before mid-September. If we look at the last five years, however, we can see that this is a genuine trend,” recalls Bovard, who is also president of Cave Mont Blanc de Morgex et La Salle, a cooperative with an annual production of around 160,000 bottles, 40 per cent of which are sold in the Aosta Valley, another 40 per cent in Italia and the remainder abroad.
The unusual weather conditions have also led to the simultaneous ripening of different grape varieties, and this ‘has required a different approach to that normally taken when ripening occurs in stages’. If this further anomaly becomes the norm, then we will all have to consider a radical reorganisation of our work. Furthermore, the extreme heat also poses a significant challenge in terms of managing the temperature of the grapes, even in the cellar’.
There is another reason why it was necessary to harvest certain grape varieties at the same time: ‘To preserve the freshness and acidity typical of mountain wines, which would otherwise have been at risk of being compromised,’ explains Nicolas Bovard, ‘but it is becoming increasingly difficult to strike the right balance between ripeness and acidity.’
It was precisely the hard work of everyone involved on the ground, in the view of the Consortium’s president, that means the 2026 vintage can be described as ‘a good harvest’. However, if record temperatures and the lack of rainfall continue with ever-increasing regularity and frequency, ‘the availability of water resources will become an issue, particularly in light of the gradual melting of the glaciers. For now, emergency irrigation systems have averted the worst, but we do not know for how long’. The harvest yield was also in line with that of 2025, ‘but the availability of water resources in the coming years could become an issue’.
