2025 was a good vintage, with a total of 940 mm of rainfall between January 2025 and October 2025. The winter was cold but unfortunately snowless, and bud break began in late March among the lower vineyards and in mid-April among the higher vineyards. Abundant rainfall in winter and spring helped us to face this beautiful vintage.

In late spring and summer the weather helped us, with some rain and moderate temperatures in June and July, allowing the grapes to fully mature in early September. By September, on northern Etna, we had average temperatures of 10 degrees Celsius at night and 20-25 degrees Celsius during the day, which allowed for slow and balanced ripening.

The harvest began on September 16th with the picking of the white grapes from the lower vineyards for our Versante Nord Bianco. The harvest concluded on October 20th in our highest vineyard, Quota N. We can be satisfied with this year's production. We will have lighter, lower-alcohol reds thanks this year, while for the Versante Nord Bianco, we will have a higher percentage of Carricante,around 80%. We believe this will contribute more acidic structure to the wine, providing a clearer representation of the Carricante from the northern part of Etna compared to the eastern side.

Here are some pictures of the 2025 harvest!

2025: heatwaves and hail.

2025 started well enough, with a spring that balanced rain and sun, leading the vines to a healthy, slightly advanced cycle with flowering in early June, leading us to believe we’d harvest somewhere around mid-September. Around June 15th, temperatures starting steadily rising to over 85 degrees. At this point, the vines soaked up the sun to develop its vegetal cycle. After a severe hail storm in July that damaged two of our hectares, another heatwave scorched the vines for the last two weeks of August.

The grapes began to suffer, as the vines began absorbing their juices to resist and therefore lowering what we’d initially planned to harvest. In Sancerre, the first team of pickers arrived in late August to make sure that alcoholic potentials wouldn’t sky-rocket. We began on September 2nd: we are far from the yields we would hope for, there was hardly any juice in the grapes so this is yet another vintage with really low yields. The one positive is the balance of the juices, with potentials ranging between 13 and 14% and good acidities.

While this has always been the case, we are now dependent on climactical conditions that continue to become even more extreme. 2025 was the most precocious vintage since 1976, narrowly beating out 2003 and 2009 by a couple of days.

The 2025 vintage was characterized by abundant rainfall during late spring and a predominance of the Mistral, a cool, dry wind blowing from the northwest.
This allowed the vines to achieve good yields and delay the ripening of the grapes.

Zibibbo, a grape known for its thick skin, produced very large bunches this year with large berries, shifting the skin/pulp balance in favor of the pulp. Macerations were therefore shorter and the musts, lower in sugar than usual, were characterized by excellent acidity and freshness.

The wines have a low alcohol content, resulting in immediate and exceptionally drinkable wines from the start. Thanks to their volcanic flavor, the persistence on the palate never wanes. It is a rare vintage, and one that leaves us pleasantly surprised, especially since, in recent harvests, we have been accustomed to warm Sirocco winds and extreme temperatures.

In the plots where ripening occurs early, namely those near the sea, we harvested almost late, picking healthy, very ripe grapes that we dried to produce Passulata. This wine hadn't been made since 2021 because the grapes were never up to par.
It's been 10 years since we started, a very short time for someone in this profession. We still have a lot to learn, yet today I feel I know every plant on our 3 hectares better, I can sense how the wine from each plot will evolve, whether it will tend to reduce or oxidize, whether it should be separated from its lees sooner or later, and I'm more aware of the potential of our wines despite the variability
of the vintage.

I think that, just as pruning a vine requires metaphorically entering the plant itself, understanding the terroir and interpreting it requires living it every day, even though this requires enormous sacrifices because I live on an island in the middle of the Mediterranean, far from the rest of the world.

Our 2025 harvest lasted from September 1st to September 12th with a few days of break in the middle The grapes were healthy with moderate-to-low yields but ultimately better than our tiny 2024 harvest.

The first wines seem tannic and well structured. I believe it will be quality vintage.

Sylvie,

After 2024, we thought we'd lived through the hardest vintage imaginable. And yet...

Winter was clement, with enough rain and a few more really cold days compared to past years. Spring is where we started facing problems, notably rain. The buds grew at a relatively normal pace; pockets of mildew had already started appearing by late-April/early-May on the most sensitive parcels, but at this point things didn't seem particularly dramatic. Everything felt quite manageable up until early June. 

From the 2nd to 8th of June, there was between 100 and 120mm of rain, making it impossible to properly protect the vines at a crucial moment. We began our conversion to organics in 2024, where only copper and sulfur are allowed as contact treatments; it is estimated these are efficient up to 20mm of rain but no more. As each week passed, the rain was too constant for us to do anything. By late June, the vines were severely marked with mildew. And what followed was a three week heatwave and drought for the rest of the month that continued up until harvest. 

Despite all the previous rain, by mid-August the high heat triggered hydric stress and blocked the grapes' physiological maturity at a time where phenolic ripeness was already quite advanced (the pips were ripe but the grapes were aromatically lacking. After waiting a few weeks hoping to obtain optimal aromatic richness, I decided to start harvesting early, on August 23rd. This decision was to avoid what I perceived as a degradation of the grapes' acid. It was the right decision, because we'd already lost 60% of the crop and that accelerated the maturities of what was left on the vines. 

We wrapped up on September 2nd. In the end it was the right choice to pick so early, because the heavy rains that followed in early September could have destroyed the PH levels. In the end, the juices were qualitative, balanced, aromatic and with the right amount of acidity. The alcoholic fermentation was longer than in 2024, with malolactic following and now all but done (November 17th). The wines are very promising and it's also the first year we're incorporating some new vinification vessels including two new foudres.

2025: a great harvest.

The whole year was very nice: great weather, dry wind, no mildew at all. It was the opposite of 2024! It could have been an truly exceptional vintage, but the rain arrived just before and also during the harvest. Therefore, some bad acetic rot has developed itself, forcing us to throw away about 15 % of the grapes.

Anyway, I am very happy with this vintage, because the quality and the yields are good. Furthermore, it was possible to produce all the types of Vouvray: dry, semi-dry, sweet and also sparkling. It is pretty rare to have this possibility.

This year was very dry in Vouvray, but my vineyard did not suffer from the drought, because it is located in a cool climate valley and also -especially- because I plow the soil of all my estate. Plowing is very helpful for the humidity during a dry season.

The 2025's harvest was very early, from September the 8th to the 26th. That is one month earlier than 2024!

2025 was excellent in terms of quality but a bit disappointing in quantity. The vinifications were smooth but it will be a very solar vintage lacking Beaujolais typicity. I believe it will be very similar to 2015, then years later!

The other big news is that the "next vigneron of La Roilette" was born, our grandson Léo! 
 

The 2025 harvest at La Stoppa has just come to an end – this year it began on August 19 and finished on September 13 – and it leaves us with the satisfaction of a good vintage. The climate was temperate and generally mild, with regular rainfall (296 mm since April) and few extremes of heat. These conditions allowed the grapes to ripen gradually, reaching an ideal balance.

We harvested more grapes than in 2024; however, the yield remained below that of a regular year, as the vines were still showing the effects of the particularly difficult previous season. The quality, though, has been excellent.
The harvest lasted longer than usual, partly due to the careful work on the bunches of Malvasia di Candia Aromatica destined for Vino del Volta – produced in larger quantities this year – which require precise selections and long drying times.

As always, the harvest was also a time of encounters and exchange. This year we were joined by many young people from the province of Piacenza, together with Thomas from Burgundy; Emma, a young student from the University of Oxford; and Veronica, a Mexican friend who works with our new importers in Costa Rica. Each time, it is an enrichment: the hands and voices weaving among the rows of vines and in the cellar become part of the wine that will be born.

Well that was fast. We wrapped up picking the whites on September 5th, leaving only the few reds at the time of this writing.

If we had to summarize this year's harvest, the word is precocious. It's true that in the last few years we've been saying we harvest earlier and earlier, but 2025 was even more than what we've gotten used to. It's odd because bud-break wasn't particularly early and corresponded to the same period as the last 15 years. Flowering was a bit early but still eight days after 2020 and 4 days after 2022, the two previous record holders for early starts. In the end, the biggest factor was a combination of 35mm of rain between the 20th and 23rd of July followed by a hot and dry August.  

We did our first tests of the grapes' maturities on August 8th, then on the 12th and finally on the 14th. The conclusion was immediate: maturities where rising at a dizzying pace and our initial plan of starting to harvest between the 25th of August and September 2nd was no longer realistic. Our team, upon their return from vacation on August 18th, was therefore very surprised to find out we'd be starting harvest as soon as we could. This meant within the week of their return. By starting on Thursday the 21st, 2025 is officially the earliest in the estate's history (2020 and 2022 started on the 24th). It was a ton of work to get everything and everyone ready but we did it.

We started at Briords under a radiant sun with a reduced team of about 30 people. The harvest was magnificent, with big, heavy and juicy bunches. Due to 2024's tiny crop, the vines had reserves and it showed. The grapes were ripe with a potential of 11.5% and acidities close to 5.4. In the end we spent two beautiful days in these parcels.

On Saturday the 23rd, we started with parcels that would go into La Pépie, the bulk of the harvester's work. Our trucks filled up quickly with grapes, which were driven to the estate and pressed immediately. By the 25th, the picking team grew as all the people who couldn't get make it earlier due to preexisting vacation plans joined. We were now 57 in the vines to keep picking grapes for La Pépie. The bunches were just as nice as in Briords. In the cellar, the first odors of fermentation became perceptible, with Briords bubbling at the surface. 

On Tuesday the 26th we didn't really change sectors but start picking in terroirs closer to the Maine where the soils drain more. It's also at this time that we picked what will become Château Thébau 2025, magnificent grapes that gave very concentrated juices. On the 27th we continued in the Thébaud sector for more grapes destined to La Pépie, all with a joyful ambience as the team progressed.

To wrap up the last week of the month of August, we decided to pick in Gras Moutons and Les Gustais for -you guessed it- Gras Moutons but also the cru Monnière-Saint Fiacre. Here the concentrations and juices were more important, reaching upwards of 200g of sugar per liter for certain parcels (12.3%). The grapes are just as beautiful as everything picked before them and they are a joy to press. By this point, five our our harvesters, all students, needed to leave us to start the school year. 

On September 1st and 2nd, we decided to pick the grapes above the estate that produce Clisson because rain was announced later in the week. So we avoided getting wet on those days but it wouldn't last. Picking the last of Gras Moutons, our team was disappointed to have to get into their rain gear due to short but violent downfalls. And that would become the new rhythm, picking between a beautiful sun and episodes of rain. Still, the grapes continued to be perfect, save for our last day with the whites where we had to do a lot of sorting. These final grapes, while somewhat diluted, still showed nice potentials of 12% and kept their acidity. 

All the whites are fermenting well, so now we need to figure out when to pick the reds. We haven't exactly decided when, though we will be picking some Côt this coming Friday.

Winter 2024 was not a very cold one and unfortunately without snow. This lead to the budding of the vines started earlier than in previous years. Some rain in Spring helped face the early summer months.

We were very careful during the flowering in June, remembering how devastating it was in 2023 and fearing to find any spore of mildew. But the weather helped us in this sense, with a dry June and July followed by rains in August that led our plants to reach a good ripening.
 
The harvest started on September 14th with the red grapes: a week earlier than in previous years. We started from the lowest vines, continuing in elevation. It was the hottest harvest we've ever had, reaching up to 30 Celsius and leading to the driest harvest we have seen in all my years on Etna. The ripening was very similar between one vineyard to another: we harvested the grapes in Nave, our highest vineyard on October 4th, 15 days earlier than usual, finishing the harvest in just 20 days.
 
We can be satisfied with the production this year, with intense, deep reds. By incorporating a new vineyard planted in 2021, the Versante Nord Bianco will have a lower percentage of Minnella and more Carricante. We think that this will help bring more acidity to the wine. 
 
In 2024, we were able to produce the totality of our cuvées, unlike in 2023 where we only produced Versante Nord Rosso and the two whites .