What is made here
Wine colours
The only colour the rules allow.
Where it is
Κουμανδαρία in Cyprus
- Latitude
- 34.8°–34.9° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 436 m to 942 m
- Production zone
- 14,899 ha
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 Κουμανδαρία must meet.
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
2 varieties · Κουμανδαρία
Mavro, Xinisteri
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
2,750
Vines per hectare, minimum
Training
Systems allowed
classic low (bush) form
Permitted, with limits
Irrigation
Cellar
Where the wine must be made
Within the production zone
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 22.0 °C, very hot on Gregory Jones's scale, with 2,562 growing degree days (Winkler V).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 687 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 22.0 °C
- Very hot · above 21 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 2,562
- Region V: 2,222 and over degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 89 mm
- Of 362 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 31 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 629 m; Vineyard point 2, 854 m; Vineyard point 3, 417 m; Vineyard point 4, 820 m; Vineyard point 5, 717 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 moderately complex terrain; not yet checked against a weather station.
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. ΔαφνέςVery similarCompared with Κουμανδαρία: same season warmth, wetter (+26 mm).
2. GozoVery similarCompared with Κουμανδαρία: same season warmth, wetter (+37 mm).
3. MaltaVery similarCompared with Κουμανδαρία: −0.3 °C in the growing season, wetter (+36 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, 31 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: Κουμανδαρία (214_2005.pdf) · National authority, as filed in the EU register (eAmbrosia) · Official document
- Climate profiles calculated by Vinous: method
Still to check (3)
- Generated from EU reference data: check against the current product specification.
- From the specification: Commandaria (Κουμανδαρία), Cypriot order 214/2005; the scanned text has gaps (missing words and figures). Traditional varieties incl. Mavro; the white variety's name is illegible (the register lists Xynisteri). Must sugar at harvest at least 212 g/l (white variety, name illegible) and 258 g/l for Mavro, then at least 390 g/l and at most 450 g/l after sun exposure of the grapes. Fortification after fermentation with wine alcohol (95–96 % vol) or wine distillate (70–86 % vol) is permitted, before ageing; after it the wine has an actual strength stated with 20 % vol (wording partly illegible) and a total strength of at least 22.5 % vol. Vineyards at least 4 years old; density 2,750/ha for vineyards planted before 2000 (later figure illegible); irrigation only with Wine Products Council approval in prolonged drought; continuous presses prohibited; wine may leave the zone only after fermentation for fortification. The grape-yield figure in kg is illegible.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.