What is made here
Wine colours
Colours the rules allow. Pick a colour to filter the rules and grapes below.
The source gives no colour for 1 wine category here, so the colours below are incomplete.
Where it is
Vorarlberg in Austria
- Latitude
- 46.8°–47.6° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 426 m to 735 m
- Production zone
- 262,041 ha
Boundary drawn from whole communes, so it is a little larger than the legal zone. Boundary: Eurac Research PDO inventory (CC0). Country outlines: Natural Earth. Dots on the zone map are the vineyard points used for climate.
Showing every colour The colour filter changes the rules and grapes. Climate, vintages and soils describe the vineyards, so they stay the same.
01 · What the law says
The rules
Limits on grapes, yields, ripeness and ageing that every wine labelled Vorarlberg must meet.
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
33 varieties · Vorarlberg (quality sparkling wine), Vorarlberg (wine)
Blauburger, Blauer Burgunder, Blauer Portugieser, Blauer Wildbacher, Blaufränkisch, Bouvier, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Frühroter Veltliner, Furmint, Gelber Muskateller, Goldburger, Grauer Burgunder, Grüner Veltliner, Jubiläumsrebe, Merlot, Muller Thurgau, Muskat Ottonel, Neuburger, Riesling, Roesler, Roter Vetliner, Rotgipfler, Ráthay, Sankt Laurent, Sauvignon Blanc, Scheurebe, Sylvaner, Syrah, Welschriesling, Zierfandler, Zweigelt
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
Allowed
Enrichment (chaptalisation)
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 14.2 °C, cool on Gregory Jones's scale, with 976 growing degree days (Winkler Ia).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 517 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 14.2 °C
- Cool · 13–15 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 976
- Region Ia: under 1,111 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 1,145 mm
- Of 1,732 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 259 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 501 m; Vineyard point 2, 477 m; Vineyard point 3, 408 m; Vineyard point 4, 450 m; Vineyard point 5, 750 m), moved to each point's height from the model's terrain. Indices that need daily data are not captured yet. How the climate figures are made.
Lower confidence:Monthly reanalysis in complex terrain (height corrections up to 3.4 °C); absolute values may be several degrees out, year-to-year changes are more reliable.
Closest climates in the database
Picked by the data, not by hand: the profiles nearest on season warmth (counted twice), degree days, rain, ripening-month nights and day–night range. Neighbours within 30 km are left out, as they share the same weather.
1. SalzburgVery similarCompared with Vorarlberg: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. TirolVery similarCompared with Vorarlberg: −0.8 °C in the growing season, similar rain.
3. KärntenVery similarCompared with Vorarlberg: −0.4 °C in the growing season, drier (−207 mm).
Growing-season temperature
Growing degree days
Growing-season rain
03 · Year by year
35 vintages
Each column is one growing season: heat above or below the 1991–2020 average, and rain at harvest. Pick a year for the details.
Warmer than averageCooler than averageHarvest rain (Sep–Oct)Average harvest rain, 259 mm
2025
- Growing-season temp.
- Growing degree days
- Harvest rain
- Growing-season rain
- September nights
- Hot days and frosts
Seasons are labelled by harvest year (April–October). Year-to-year changes from ERA5-Land; tested against station records in Alto Adige (r = 0.94 for season temperature at Bolzano). Rain varies more locally, so treat single-season rain with some caution. Vintage ratings, harvest dates and frost or hail events have places in the data model but are not loaded yet.
04 · Where the numbers come from
Sources
- A geospatial inventory of regulatory information for wine protected designations of origin in Europe · Candiago et al., Scientific Data 9, 394 (2022); Eurac Research · CC0
- ERA5-Land monthly averaged data (reanalysis-era5-land-monthly-means) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), Climate Data Store · CC BY 4.0 (Copernicus licence)
- OpenStreetMap vineyard areas (landuse=vineyard), from Geofabrik country extracts · OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL 1.0
- Copernicus DEM GLO-90 (AWS open data tiles) · European Space Agency / Copernicus · Copernicus DEM licence
- Single document: Vorarlberg (Official Journal C 276, 21.8.2020; and the product specification 'Produktspezifikation Vorarlberg.pdf' from the EU register) · European Union, Official Journal (C series) · EU law (Commission reuse policy)
- Climate profiles calculated by Vinous: method
Still to check (3)
- Generated from EU reference data: check against the current product specification.
- From the specification: The single document gives no analytical limits: the section 4 table is empty and the 'Vorarlberg' wines (mainly Qualitätswein, also Kabinett, Spätlese and other Prädikat levels) follow the national product specification. Treatment with potassium sorbate and dimethyl dicarbonate is excluded; enrichment and other specific practices are left to the product specification; marketing needs an official quality check number (Staatliche Prüfnummer). The designation is said not to be used for quality sparkling wine in practice. The national product specification sets must weights per level (Qualitätswein 15, Kabinett 17, Spätlese 19, Auslese 21, Beerenauslese, Eiswein and Strohwein 25, Ausbruch 27, Trockenbeerenauslese 30 °KMW); only Qualitätswein may be enriched (up to 2 % vol, 2.5 % in poor years) or sweetened (up to 15 g/l), and Strohwein grapes must be dried for at least three months (two if they reach 30 °KMW). It gives a maximum yield of 9,000 kg grapes or 6,750 l wine per hectare, which contradicts the single document's 10,000 kg; the single document's figure is kept.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.