Best Time for a Santorini Wine Tour: Months, Harvest & Sunset

Month by month: weather, visitors and the vineyard

Temperatures and rain days are averages for Santorini airport; the caldera-rim wineries are higher and more exposed, so their evenings are often cooler and windier. The passenger column counts everyone flying in and out of the island, which makes it an indicator of how busy Santorini is, not a count of people at the wineries.

May has the same average high as October, 23.5°C. The vineyards are green and flowering, and the sun sets after 8 pm, so a sunset tour that starts around 4 pm may finish before the sun goes down. Most tours and wineries have opened by then.

June is warmer at 28.2°C and shares the latest sunsets of the year with July. It is busier than May, with about 419,000 airport passengers in 2024.

July and August are the hottest months, at 30.4°C and 30.1°C, and the busiest, with more than half a million airport passengers each. August is harvest month in most recent years, which is the main wine-related reason to choose it.

September is still warm at 27.7°C and remains busy: it was the third-busiest month at the airport in both 2024 and 2025, ahead of June. In a late year the last grapes are picked in its first week or so.

October matches May’s 23.5°C, with about 294,000 airport passengers in 2024, more than 40% fewer than in August. The sun sets before 7 pm by mid-month, and an hour earlier once the clocks go back on the last Sunday of October. Some seasonal wineries and tours start to close or cut back toward the end of the month (Gaia’s season ends on October 31), while others, such as Santo Wines, stay open.

November to March are the quietest months, with rain on 9 to 13 days a month. The sun sets between about 5 and 6:30 pm until the clocks go forward on the last Sunday in March, when sunset moves to about 7:40 pm. Far fewer tours run, but Santo Wines and the Wine Museum stay open, and Hatzidakis takes visitors by appointment.

The harvest: when it happens and what you will see

The grape harvest is the main wine-specific reason to choose a month. Wines of Greece describes Santorini’s harvest as one of the two or three earliest in the country, and the wineries’ own reports show how much it moves from year to year:

So August is the safest month to catch picking, and late July or early September are possible only in an early or a late year. The grapes are picked by hand from vines trained into low baskets, called kouloura, that rest on the ground. Grapes for Vinsanto, the island’s sweet wine, are then laid out in the sun for about one to two weeks, depending on the winery. Whether your tour stops at a vineyard while picking is under way depends on the day and the route, so treat it as a bonus, not a promise, and ask your guide what is happening that week.

Santo Wines also holds the Vedema harvest festival at its winery in Pyrgos on a Sunday evening in early August: August 3 in 2025 and August 2 in 2026.

Morning, afternoon or sunset tour

A morning tour leaves the evening free for the rest of Santorini, while a sunset tour adds late-day views to the tastings. Most tours leave either in the morning, roughly between 10 and 11:40 am, or in the afternoon, roughly between 3:30 and 4 pm, and take about four hours.

If sunset is important, choose a tour sold as a sunset tour and check where the sunset stop is. Some finish at a caldera-view winery such as Santo Wines, while others continue to Oia or another viewpoint. Check the pickup time for your date as well: most afternoon tours keep the same start time through the summer, and in June and July the sun sets after 8:30 pm, later than a four-hour tour that starts at 4 pm usually finishes. From mid-September it sets before 7:30 pm. At least one operator starts its tour earlier in winter, and two stop offering the sunset view on their afternoon tour after August 31.

In July the airport is about as warm across a morning tour’s hours as across an afternoon tour’s, so choose the departure for the sunset and the rest of your day, not for the heat.

Heat, wind and rain on a wine tour

Heat matters most at a vineyard stop. The vines grow in baskets 10 to 20 centimeters off the ground, so there is no shade among them. From June to September bring a hat and water; the tastings themselves are in tasting rooms or on terraces.

Wind blows on Santorini all year. In summer it is a steady northerly breeze, and the windiest months at the airport are in winter, when February averages 23 km/h. On a caldera terrace in the evening it can feel cool from October to April, so bring a layer.

Rain is rare from May to September, falling on fewer than four days a month at the airport and on less than one day a month from June to August. From November to March it falls on 9 to 13 days a month, so a winter tour is more likely to have a wet vineyard stop.

Which tour suits your dates

For the sunset in the main season, the Small-Group Sunset Wine Tour with Santo Winery ends at Santo Wines on the caldera; its GetYourGuide listing gives departures from May to October. Our Santorini sunset wine tours page compares the other sunset options.

For a winter date, the Wine Tour with Sunset in Oia publishes a winter schedule from November to March that starts earlier, and visits Hatzidakis and the Wine Museum.

If you would rather compare every format, from three-winery tours to private cars and food pairings, see which Santorini wine tour is right for you.