What is made here
Wine colours
Colours the rules allow. Pick a colour to filter the rules and grapes below.
Where it is
Heuvellandse wijn in Belgium
- Latitude
- 50.7°–50.8° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 33 m to 98 m
- Production zone
- 9,484 ha
Lies within
Vlaamse mousserende kwaliteitswijn
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 Heuvellandse wijn must meet.
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
12 varieties ·
Auxerrois, Chardonnay, Dornfelder, Johanniter, Kerner, Muller Thurgau, Muscat, Pinot Grigio, Pinot Noir, Regent, Riesling, Siegerrebe
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
Cellar
Where the wine must be made
Within the production zone
Allowed
Enrichment (chaptalisation)
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 14.5 °C, cool on Gregory Jones's scale, with 982 growing degree days (Winkler Ia).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 49 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 14.5 °C
- Cool · 13–15 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 982
- Region Ia: under 1,111 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 450 mm
- Of 766 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 125 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 87 m; Vineyard point 2, 27 m; Vineyard point 3, 47 m; Vineyard point 4, 52 m; Vineyard point 5, 33 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. Vlaamse mousserende kwaliteitswijnVery similarCompared with Heuvellandse wijn: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. OoldeVery similarCompared with Heuvellandse wijn: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. MergellandVery similarCompared with Heuvellandse wijn: same season warmth, wetter (+47 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, 125 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: Heuvellandse wijn (Official Journal C, C/2024/1487, 16.02.2024; and the product specification 'Heuvellandse wijn.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: Maximum yields are 3-year averages set per variety, not per wine: 65 hl/ha for most white and red varieties, 55 hl/ha for Pinot Gris and Pinot Noir, 75 hl/ha for rosé, 80 hl/ha for Acolon, Auxerrois, Dornfelder, Souvignier Gris and Zweigelt. The prose sets minimum actual strength at 10 % vol but the analytical table gives 9; the maximum total strength of 13 % vol applies after enrichment. Deacidification is limited to 1 g/l; vinification may also take place in the immediate vicinity with prior authorisation. Varieties include Acolon, Auxerrois, Cabernet Cortis, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Solaris. The 2011 national product specification gives lower minima (natural 8 % vol, actual 8.5 % vol, total acidity 3.5 g/l), a 13.5 % vol maximum after enrichment and yields of 65 hl/ha (80 hl/ha for Müller-Thurgau, Kerner, Auxerrois and Dornfelder); the single document's values are kept.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.