What is made here
Wine colours
The only colour the rules allow.
Where it is
Weinviertel in Austria
- Latitude
- 48.1°–48.9° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 193 m to 322 m
- Production zone
- 499,660 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.
01 · What the law says
The rules
Limits on grapes, yields, ripeness and ageing that every wine labelled Weinviertel must meet.
Blend rules
Weinviertel (wine)
- – Grüner Veltliner · Main grape
- ≤ 15% other varieties used to produce Qualitätswein · Allowed
Blend rules
Weinviertel Reserve
- – Grüner Veltliner · Main grape
- ≤ 15% other varieties used to produce Qualitätswein · Allowed
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
1 varieties · Weinviertel (wine), Weinviertel Reserve
Grüner Veltliner
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
Allowed
Enrichment (chaptalisation)
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 15.7 °C, intermediate on Gregory Jones's scale, with 1,255 growing degree days (Winkler Ib).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 261 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 15.7 °C
- Intermediate · 15–17 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 1,255
- Region Ib: 1,111–1,388 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 482 mm
- Of 686 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 119 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 245 m; Vineyard point 2, 353 m; Vineyard point 3, 172 m; Vineyard point 4, 222 m; Vineyard point 5, 313 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.
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. Coteaux du GiennoisVery similarCompared with Weinviertel: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. StredoslovenskáVery similarCompared with Weinviertel: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. Menetou-SalonVery similarCompared with Weinviertel: 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, 119 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: Weinviertel (Official Journal C 298, 8.9.2020; and the product specification 'Produktspezifikation Weinviertel DAC.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: The document implies at least 85 % Grüner Veltliner (other Qualitätswein varieties up to 15 %). Analytical limits, enrichment and quality levels are left to the national product specification; treatment with potassium sorbate and dimethyl dicarbonate is prohibited. Austrian law lets PDO wine be made in the surrounding or an adjacent wine-growing region, and every wine needs an official quality check number (analytical and sensory test). The national specification (2011) adds the Reserve type and the DAC limits: actual alcohol to be labelled as 12.0 or 12.5 % vol (13 % in exceptional years by committee decision), Reserve 13.0 % vol; enrichment up to 2 % vol (2.5 % in poor years). It gives a maximum yield of 9,000 kg grapes or 6,750 l wine per hectare, which contradicts the 10 t/ha kept from the single document.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.