What is made here
Wine colours
The only colour the rules allow.
Where it is
Vin mousseux de qualité de Wallonie in Belgium
- Latitude
- 49.5°–50.8° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 46 m to 276 m
- Production zone
- 1,690,538 ha
Covers the same area as
Crémant de Wallonie
Contains 1 appellation (outlined on the zone map)
Côtes de Sambre et Meuse
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 Vin mousseux de qualité de Wallonie must meet.
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
7 varieties · Vin mousseux de qualité de Wallonie
Auxerrois, Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Grigio, Pinot Meunier, Pinot Noir, Riesling
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
Training
Systems allowed
taille Guyot simple; taille Guyot double; Cordeau de Royat
Cellar
Where the wine must be made
Within the production zone
Allowed
Enrichment (chaptalisation)
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 14.4 °C, cool on Gregory Jones's scale, with 975 growing degree days (Winkler Ia).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 156 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 14.4 °C
- Cool · 13–15 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 975
- Region Ia: under 1,111 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 497 mm
- Of 876 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 135 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 175 m; Vineyard point 2, 26 m; Vineyard point 3, 247 m; Vineyard point 4, 261 m; Vineyard point 5, 69 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. OoldeVery similarCompared with Vin mousseux de qualité de Wallonie: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. Vlaamse mousserende kwaliteitswijnVery similarCompared with Vin mousseux de qualité de Wallonie: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. VijlenVery similarCompared with Vin mousseux de qualité de Wallonie: 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, 135 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
- Product specification: Vin mousseux de qualité de Wallonie (CC - AOP.Vin.Mousseux.Qualite.Wallonie.pdf) · National authority, as filed in the EU register (eAmbrosia) · Official document
- 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: White or rosé quality sparkling wine made by the traditional method; may be brut, sec or demi-sec. Total acidity must be at least 5 g/l expressed as H2SO4 (not tartaric), so it is left null. Grapes from the Walloon Region; the name may add one of about 30 smaller geographical units (e.g. Pays de Herve, Gaume, Tournaisis). Row spacing 1–2.5 m and vine spacing 0.9–1.3 m; no minimum density stated.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.