From today, 30 October, vino novello — Italy’s new wine — can be sold: the law has allowed it since 00:01 this morning. It is a wine with a designation of origin, made at least 40% by carbonic maceration of whole bunches, bottled by 31 December and meant to be drunk young. In Puglia the production rules of nine DOC wines and all six IGTs allow it: here is which ones, and what they say.

For most of the year a wine has to wait before it is good. Novello is the exception: it arrives a few weeks after the harvest, deeply coloured, smelling of fruit, and its whole point is being young. If you know Beaujolais Nouveau, you already know the idea. Today is the first day Italian law allows it to be sold, which is why at the end of October it appears everywhere at once.

A hand holding a glass of red wine between the green rows of a vineyard

Novello arrives a few weeks after the harvest.

What novello is, by law

In Italy, novello is not just any wine made in a hurry: it is a regulated term. The first rules came in a ministerial decree of 1989; the ones in force are in annex 7 of the decree of 13 August 2012, referred to by Italy’s consolidated wine law. The rules are few and precise:

  • only DOC or IGT wines — Italy’s protected designations and geographical indications — may be called novello, and only if their production rules include that type;
  • at least 40% of the wine must be made by carbonic maceration of whole grapes; the rest can be made the conventional way;
  • winemaking cannot last less than ten days;
  • the minimum alcohol is 11% and residual sugar may not exceed 10 grams per litre;
  • sales begin at 00:01 on 30 October, and the wine must be bottled by 31 December of the harvest year, which has to appear on the label.

Carbonic maceration, explained

In ordinary winemaking the grapes are crushed and yeasts turn the sugar into alcohol. In carbonic maceration they are not: whole bunches are sealed in steel tanks filled with carbon dioxide. According to the winemaking notes on the Italian site Agraria.org, they stay there for about two to three weeks at 28-30°C, and in that oxygen-free space an enzymatic fermentation starts inside each berry, turning part of the sugar into alcohol before the grapes are even crushed.

The result is a brightly coloured wine, from deep ruby to purple, with aromas of violet, iris and raspberry. The technique comes from the research of French winemakers: it is the method behind Beaujolais Nouveau, made from Gamay grapes.

Why 30 October

Because the decree says so: before 30 October, transport documents must state that the wine may not be put on sale before that hour. Until 2012 the date was 6 November; then it was brought forward. Italian tradition serves it around 11 November, St Martin’s Day, the saint of new wine: the legal date comes twelve days earlier.

How long it keeps

Not long, and that is the idea. Novello is bottled by the end of December and, as Agraria.org’s winemaking notes put it, should be drunk within a few months: it is not made for ageing, but to bring the fruit of the harvest just finished to the table.

Puglia’s novelli, rule by rule

We read the production rules published by the Italian Ministry of Agriculture for every Apulian designation. The novello type is allowed in nine DOC wines:

  • Barletta — red, also as novello;
  • Brindisi — red, also as novello;
  • Castel del Monte — red, also as novello, from Nero di Troia, Aglianico or Montepulciano;
  • Colline Joniche Tarantine — red and rosé, also as novello;
  • Galatina — red novello, with at least 65% Negroamaro;
  • Leverano — red novello;
  • Lizzano — red and rosé novello;
  • San Severo — red, also as novello;
  • Squinzano — red, also as novello.

And in all six IGTs of the region — Puglia, Salento, Daunia, Murgia, Tarantino and Valle d’Itria — which allow red and rosé novello. It is not in the current rules of Salice Salentino, even though some old lists still include it among the novelli, nor in Primitivo di Manduria.

Two sets of rules stricter than the law. Leverano requires its red novello to be made with 50% carbonic maceration, ten points above the national minimum. Lizzano still states that its novello cannot be sold before 6 November: the old national date, left in the text of the designation.

So which ones come out this year?

We do not know, and we are not guessing. Production rules say a novello may be made, not that anyone does: which Apulian wineries bottle one in 2026 only the wineries can say, and this piece was written before their announcements. The simplest way to find one is to ask in a wine shop in Puglia, or at the new wine festivals many towns hold in November.

To get to know the wines it all starts from, see our guide to the wines of Puglia and our piece on Primitivo and Negroamaro. And for how wine was made before steel tanks, the grape harvest the old way.

While you wait for novello. We do not sell novello, but we do sell the reds it comes from: see our range of Apulian red wines.

How this piece was written. The rules come from annex 7 of the Italian ministerial decree of 13 August 2012, published in the Official Gazette; the Apulian types from the production rules published by the Ministry of Agriculture, read one by one at the end of September 2026; the technique and shelf life from Agraria.org’s winemaking notes. If any production rules change after that date, this list will need updating.

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