Seasonal Wine in Umbria

Year round

• Winter cellar ageing for the new Sagrantino vintage: Sagrantino di Montefalco DOCG requires 33 months of total ageing with at least 12 months in oak before release, so January and February cellars are full of the harvest from three vintages back settling toward bottling.
• Umbria Jazz Winter brings visitors to Orvieto's cellars: Umbria Jazz Winter fills Orvieto's historic center with soul, jazz, gospel and funk over New Year, a rare midwinter draw for the tufa-cellar town that keeps its Orvieto Classico producers busy pouring between concerts.
• Vigneti Aperti opens Umbria's vineyards for spring: Movimento Turismo del Vino Umbria's Vigneti Aperti spreads across several spring weeks, inviting visitors to walk the vine rows as the region's vineyards come back into growth after winter pruning.
• AMontefalco previews the new Sagrantino vintage: AMontefalco gathers international press and trade in late April for a preview of the new Sagrantino and Montefalco-area vintages, the region's closest equivalent to a Bordeaux en-primeur week.
• Cantine Aperte opens the region's wineries in late May: Cantine Aperte has run every year since 1993 on the last weekend of May, when Movimento Turismo del Vino member estates across Umbria open cellars for tastings and direct-from-producer sales.
• Festival dei Due Mondi marks Umbria's early-summer shoulder season: Spoleto's Festival dei Due Mondi runs late June into July, the season when Umbria's vineyards move past flowering toward véraison and estates in Montefalco and the Spoleto DOC zone see a wave of festival-driven visitors.
• Calici di Stelle pairs wine with August's shooting stars: Calici di Stelle brings evening wine tastings to Umbria's medieval town centers each August, part of Movimento Turismo del Vino's national San Lorenzo-season calendar of illuminated cellar and piazza pours.
• Cantine Aperte in Vendemmia follows the harvest: Cantine Aperte in Vendemmia runs from late August through late October across nine Umbrian towns, with hand-picking, grape treading and cellar tours timed to each estate's own harvest window.
• Enologica Montefalco closes out September's harvest push: Enologica Montefalco fills three September days with guided Sagrantino tastings, food pairings and winery visits between Montefalco and Spoleto, timed just as the earliest grapes come off the vine.
• Sagrantino harvest, the second half of October: Sagrantino grapes are generally hand-picked in the second half of October, later than most Umbrian reds, with fermentation on the skins running 25 to 40 days before the wine moves into oak.
• Passito grapes dry through late autumn: Montefalco Sagrantino Passito DOCG grapes are set to dry naturally after picking, with the disciplinare permitting humidity control but banning artificial heating, a slow appassimento that carries into November.
• Cantine Aperte a San Martino closes the wine-tourism year: Cantine Aperte a San Martino spreads over two autumn weekends at Movimento Turismo del Vino Umbria estates, pairing new-vintage tastings with the season's shift into cooler weather.