What is made here
Wine colours
The only colour the rules allow.
Where it is
Vlaamse mousserende kwaliteitswijn in Belgium
- Latitude
- 50.7°–51.5° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 4 m to 102 m
- Production zone
- 1,359,957 ha
Contains 3 appellations (outlined on the zone map)
Hagelandse wijn, Haspengouwse wijn, Heuvellandse wijn
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 Vlaamse mousserende kwaliteitswijn must meet.
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
8 varieties · Vlaamse mousserende kwaliteitswijn
Auxerrois, Chardonnay, Kerner, Pinot Blanc, Pinot Grigio, Pinot Meunier, Pinot Noir, Riesling
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 1,001 growing degree days (Winkler Ia).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 83 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 14.5 °C
- Cool · 13–15 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 1,001
- Region Ia: under 1,111 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 491 mm
- Of 846 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 132 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 12 m; Vineyard point 2, 284 m; Vineyard point 3, 49 m; Vineyard point 4, 34 m; Vineyard point 5, 37 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 Vlaamse mousserende kwaliteitswijn: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. MergellandVery similarCompared with Vlaamse mousserende kwaliteitswijn: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. Ambt DeldenVery similarCompared with Vlaamse mousserende kwaliteitswijn: 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, 132 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: Vlaamse mousserende kwaliteitswijn (Vlaamse mousserende kwaliteitswijn.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: Quality sparkling wine made from white and/or rosé base wines; the alcohol, acidity and yield limits apply to the base wines. Enrichment (sucrose or concentrated must) is allowed only on the wine-growing holding, deacidification up to 1 g/l. Second fermentation in bottle is described in the link section rather than as a rule; lees ageing of 9–18 months is described, not required. The name is followed by one of 16 geographical units (e.g. Vlaamse Ardennen, Haspengouw areas) and processing must happen within the unit named on the label; grapes 100 % from the zone; wines must score at least 11/20 at tasting.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.