Geared up with headlamps and pruning shears, a group of farm staff navigate pitch-black darkness throughout a nocturnal grape harvest that shields them from Portugal’s more and more oppressive summer season warmth.
“At evening, it is a lot cooler, and with this gentle we see the bunches of grapes higher,” Maria Jeronima Mendes, 70, instructed AFP on a rural property lined with lush vines.
Local weather change is intensifying and lengthening spells of maximum warmth and drought throughout Europe, with EU’s local weather monitor reporting on Thursday that western Europe sweltered by means of its warmest summer season this yr, whereas August was the most well liked single month ever recorded globally.
The warmth has pressured diversifications within the continent’s wine-making south that features Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece.
At Herdade das Servas, an property of round 350 hectares situated some 150 kilometres east of Lisbon, nighttime grape harvests had been absolutely adopted final yr after a profitable check in 2024.
At first, the shift got here up in opposition to the reluctance of its round 20 staff from Portugal, Romania and Southeast Asia, in a sector already struggling to recruit.
However the harvesters have now come to phrases with working at evening in cooler temperatures that make the handbook work extra bearable.
“Working at evening is not extra tiring, it is only a matter of behavior,” stated Mendes, who has labored within the fields since she was 12 and is the oldest member of the group.
Beneath a transparent sky illuminated solely by the celebs and the Moon, it was nonetheless 28C at midnight on the property in southern Portugal’s Alentejo area.
However the temperature was a lot decrease than the daytime peak of 40C, with such highs creeping into September in addition to baking the nation through the summer season months.
The nighttime harvests “have develop into a necessity” to spare the employees from “temperatures of greater than 40 levels”, stated Renato Neves, director of manufacturing at Herdade das Servas.
– ‘Response to local weather change’ –
As in different European areas struck by an exceptionally heat and dry summer season, the grape harvest in Alentejo began in early August two weeks sooner than standard.
The brand new working circumstances additionally supply a bonus for the wine-making course of on the property, which produced some 277,000 litres of pink, white and rose wine in 2025.
“At evening, the grapes arrive brisker, which delays the beginning of fermentation,” making it attainable to “get hold of higher decanting” and a greater “extraction of aromas”, defined Neves.
In addition to adapting the working hours, Neves’s property not removes the weeds that develop on the base of the vines to attempt to retain soil humidity and thwart the more and more scorching, dry circumstances.
At dawn, the employees go away the vines and the harvest is taken to vats, the place the grapes are washed and sorted earlier than being crushed.
The evening harvest then supplies one other benefit, because the cellar works at full capability through the day, when the property’s photo voltaic panels are at their best.
The unfold of harvesting at evening throughout a number of European international locations “is a response to local weather change, and in Mediterranean climates I feel this follow is right here to remain”, stated oenologist Rui Reguinga.
The wine knowledgeable believes the brand new technique is “one other step within the transition in direction of a extra sustainable viticulture”.
However fellow oenologist Tiago Macena, a specialist in grape varieties native to Portugal, stated the variation had its limits because it requires a selected organisation and a workforce ready to work at evening.
The follow is for now “restricted to massive wine estates” that characterise the nation’s south, however is but to seek out an uptake among the many smaller producers within the north, he stated.
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