What is made here
Wine colours
Colours the rules allow. Pick a colour to filter the rules and grapes below.
Where it is
Weststeiermark in Austria
- Latitude
- 46.6°–47.3° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 372 m to 567 m
- Production zone
- 231,862 ha
Lies within
Steiermark
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 Weststeiermark 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 14.5 °C, cool on Gregory Jones's scale, with 1,030 growing degree days (Winkler Ia).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 539 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 14.5 °C
- Cool · 13–15 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 1,030
- Region Ia: under 1,111 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 774 mm
- Of 1,053 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 192 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 387 m; Vineyard point 2, 542 m; Vineyard point 3, 762 m; Vineyard point 4, 588 m; Vineyard point 5, 417 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 2.1 °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. OberösterreichVery similarCompared with Weststeiermark: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. Alsace grand cru HatschbourgVery similarCompared with Weststeiermark: +0.3 °C in the growing season, drier (−122 mm).
3. Alsace grand cru RangenVery similarCompared with Weststeiermark: +0.4 °C in the growing season, drier (−113 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, 192 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: Weststeiermark (Official Journal C 68, 24.02.2023; and the product specification 'Produktspezifikation Weststeiermark.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: About 80 % of production is rosé-coloured Schilcher from Blauer Wildbacher, the only variety listed in section 7; the white wines' varieties are not named. No specific oenological practices are listed. Production and bottling must take place in the Steiermark PDO area unless approved by the Styria Regional Wine Committee. The Prädikat products and must weights come from the 2011 national product specification (written for Weststeiermark before it became a DAC), which predates the DAC single document, so check that these levels are still allowed. 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. That specification also caps enriched wine at 13.5 % vol total alcohol for white (14.5 % for red), against the single document's 15 % vol, which is kept.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.