Seasonal Wine in Valais

Year round

• Bud break: The growing season opens when buds swell and shoots emerge, generally once daily temperatures pass 10 degrees Celsius; this is also the most frost-sensitive moment of the year, since a dormant bud can survive minus 15 to minus 20 degrees but a broken one tolerates barely minus 2.5.
• Flowering: Roughly 40 to 80 days after bud break, tiny vine flowers open; in Northern Hemisphere wine regions this generally happens in May and sets the stage for fruit set within days.
• Fruit set: Fertilised flowers begin forming berries around the seed almost immediately after flowering, a stage that effectively determines potential yield; on average only about 30 percent of flowers set fruit successfully.
• Veraison: About 40 to 50 days after fruit set, berries swell and change colour, red varieties turning bright red and white varieties translucent yellow, the point at which ripening truly begins; the phenological stage is considered reached once half the berries have coloured.
• Ripening: Between veraison and picking, sugar accumulates and acidity drops while the canopy keeps building reserves for the following winter; Valais's steep, sun-exposed slopes push this window earlier for early varieties and later for the canton's late-ripening reds and whites.
• Early harvest: Northern Hemisphere harvest generally runs from late August to October; in Valais the earlier-ripening white varieties such as Fendant are typically among the first picked, ahead of the canton's late-ripening reds.
• Late harvest: Late-ripening Valais varieties come in last: Petite Arvine is classified as a third-epoch, late-ripening grape, and Amigne is described as a late-season variety, so both are typically picked well after the canton's earlier whites.
• New wine season: Once fermentation is done, some Valais cellars release a small volume of vin nouveau within weeks of the harvest, following the broader French-Swiss tradition where primeur wines are put on sale almost immediately, generally within about two months of picking.
• Caves Ouvertes weekend: For one weekend each May, around 230 Valais winemakers throw open their cellar doors from 11:00 to 18:00, making it the best-known single date on the canton's wine-tourism calendar between flowering and the summer growing season.
• Tavolata season: Through August, more than thirty Valais estates host long-table Tavolata dinners in the vineyards and cellars, pairing regional food with local wine in the weeks before the earliest grapes come in.
• Autumn and Advent cellar season: Once the main harvest is in, many Valais cellars keep their doors open on a rolling basis through autumn and into Advent; the 2025 edition ran from 18 October to 21 December, well beyond the single May weekend.
• Winter pruning: With the vines dormant after the first autumn frosts strip the leaves, growers spend winter cutting and shaping the cordons and canes, work that sets the framework for the following year's bud break.