Winery photography

The calendar of the vine sets the date. Harvest is when a bodega looks most alive — pickers between the rows, crates of grapes, the sorting table, the first fermentation — and the Instituto Nacional de Vitivinicultura tracked the 2026 harvest in weekly reports from the week ending 25 January to the week ending 26 April. It is also the busiest time of the year: Mendoza alone produced 13,147,187 of the country’s 18,391,299 quintales of grapes in 2026, by the Institute’s count, and the winemaker picks each block when it is ready, not when it suits a photographer. Book harvest work early and keep the date flexible by a few days. Autumn turns the leaves gold, winter shows bare vines under the snow on the Andes, and spring brings budbreak.

Five hours are divided between the vineyard at the best light of the day, the cellar and the barrel room, the winemaker and the team at work, the tasting room with visitors, and the wines themselves — bottles and labels on a clean background for catalogues, and glasses in their setting for everything else. The shot list is agreed with the winemaker and the hospitality team before the day. Visitors and staff who appear recognisably sign a release, because article 53 of the Código Civil y Comercial requires consent to reproduce a person’s image; tour groups are photographed from behind or out of focus unless they agree.

The 60 edited photos arrive within 2 weeks. A bodega with a restaurant can add food photography on the same visit, a winery hotel fits hotel and estancia photography better, and the vineyard seen from above — rows against the mountains — is a drone photo and video session, flown by an insured pilot under ANAC rules. A dinner or a launch at the bodega is corporate event photography.