What is made here
Wine colours
Colours the rules allow. Pick a colour to filter the rules and grapes below.
Where it is
Wachau in Austria
- Latitude
- 48.3°–48.4° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 200 m to 354 m
- Production zone
- 19,229 ha
Lies within
Niederösterreich
Worked out from the boundaries (smallest container first). They follow whole communes, so a neighbour sharing a commune can show up here too.
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 Wachau 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 ·
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 15.4 °C, intermediate on Gregory Jones's scale, with 1,186 growing degree days (Winkler Ib).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 281 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 15.4 °C
- Intermediate · 15–17 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 1,186
- Region Ib: 1,111–1,388 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 581 mm
- Of 824 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 136 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 196 m; Vineyard point 2, 260 m; Vineyard point 3, 340 m; Vineyard point 4, 347 m; Vineyard point 5, 262 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 moderately complex terrain; not yet checked against a weather station.
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. Côtes du ForezVery similarCompared with Wachau: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. Alsace grand cru EngelbergVery similarCompared with Wachau: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. Alsace grand cru BruderthalVery similarCompared with Wachau: same season warmth, similar rain.
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, 136 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: Wachau (Official Journal C 68, 24.2.2023; and the product specification 'Produktspezifikation Wachau.pdf' from the EU register) · European Union, Official Journal (C series) · EU law (Commission reuse policy)
- Appellation nesting worked out from boundaries (pipeline/build_nesting.py) · Vinous, from the Eurac PDO boundaries · CC0 (source data)
- Climate profiles calculated by Vinous: method
Still to check (3)
- Generated from EU reference data: check against the current product specification.
- From the specification: Section 7 lists only Grüner Veltliner and Riesling, so no grape rule is recorded for the red wines the document describes; one set of analytical limits covers all wines. Wines may be made and bottled outside Wachau by producers based in the adjacent Kremstal or Traisental areas who own or contract Wachau vineyards. The national product specification (2011) adds the Austrian quality levels with their own limits: Qualitätswein 15 °KMW (9.5 % vol), enrichment up to 2 % vol (2.5 % in poor years) and sweetening up to 15 g/l; Kabinett 17 °KMW; Spätlese 19; Auslese 21; Beerenauslese and Eiswein 25; Ausbruch 27; Trockenbeerenauslese 30; Strohwein/Schilfwein 25 °KMW after at least three months' drying on straw or reeds (30 °KMW allows pressing after two). Prädikat wines may not be enriched or sweetened, and bottled Spätlese may not be sold before 1 January, higher levels before 1 May, after the harvest. Prädikat products carry no grape rule: any variety on the specification's list may be used. The specification's maximum yield of 9,000 kg grapes or 6,750 l wine per hectare contradicts the 10 t/ha kept from the single document.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.