EFE: Spain’s historic early vendimia and the night-pick fix
FEV’s José Luis Benítez tells EFE successive heatwaves shrink berry weight and pull harvests forward. Night picking spreads from Cava country nationwide to protect aromas and workers.
Spain’s 2026 harvest story is a map turning on earlier every week.
EFE spoke with José Luis Benítez of the Spanish Wine Federation (FEV): stacked heatwaves advance picking and trim production because berries lose weight when vines cannot drink. Castilla-La Mancha’s prior season showed how forecasts fall — hopes near 24 million hectolitres sliding toward 20. Houses such as Gramona already flagged losses near 20%. Night harvest, once niche in Cava country, is becoming a national tool from Catalonia toward Rioja and beyond. Partial dealcoholisation tricks exist for runaway sugar, Benítez notes, but they add cost.
Mini-concept: berry weight is litres. Dehydration is not only “concentration romance”; it is less juice in the truck. Night picking cools fruit and people so aromas survive the ride to the press. COAG voices also push longer-cycle local varieties as slower clocks against extreme summers.
Choose Spanish wines from estates that talk honestly about heat maths. That intentional glass respects the night crew — unlike a can stamped out in a factory with no dawn shift in a vineyard. A smaller Spanish crop can still be worth opening if the night crews won the aroma race against the afternoon furnace.
Source: EFE