What is made here
Wine colours
Colours the rules allow. Pick a colour to filter the rules and grapes below.
The source gives no colour for 1 wine category here, so the colours below are incomplete.
Where it is
Alella in Spain
- Latitude
- 41.4°–41.7° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 97 m to 351 m
- Production zone
- 36,228 ha
Lies within
Cataluña
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 Alella must meet.
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
10 varieties · Alella (liqueur wine), Alella Rancio
Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, Garnacha Blanca, Grenache, Macabeo, Moscatel de Grano Menudo, Parellada, Picapoll Blanco, Sauvignon Blanc, Xarello
19 varieties · Alella (quality sparkling wine), Alella (semi-sparkling wine)
Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, Garnacha Blanca, Garnacha Peluda, Grenache, Macabeo, Mazuela, Merlot, Moscatel de Grano Menudo, Mourvèdre, Parellada, Picapoll Blanco, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc, Sumoll Tinto, Syrah, Tempranillo, Xarello
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
Training
Systems allowed
goblet (two buds and one blind bud); trellis with division of the vegetation
Permitted, with limits
Irrigation
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 18.5 °C, warm on Gregory Jones's scale, with 1,825 growing degree days (Winkler III).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 226 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 18.5 °C
- Warm · 17–19 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 1,825
- Region III: 1,667–1,943 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 424 mm
- Of 670 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 185 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 401 m; Vineyard point 2, 148 m; Vineyard point 3, 289 m; Vineyard point 4, 159 m; Vineyard point 5, 131 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 2.3 °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. LuberonVery similarCompared with Alella: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. ПловдивVery similarCompared with Alella: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. BelletVery similarCompared with Alella: 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, 185 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: Alella (Official Journal C 217, 1.7.2020; and the technical file 'Ares(2014)2157917' 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: Section 7 names only the main varieties; white wines use white varieties only, rosés any variety. Minimum total acidity is headed 'in milliequivalents per litre' with no figure. Liqueur wines include Rancio (oxidative 'sol y serena' ageing, at least one year in oak), Mistelle and natural sweet wine from must over 250 g/l sugar. Rosé, liqueur and sparkling yields are not tied to a colour; bottling must take place in registered cellars. Rancio is made from white wines of Garnacha Blanca and Macabeo or Garnacha Negra from must of at least 14° Baumé; natural sweet wine (vino dulce natural) needs must above 250 g/l sugar, Mistela has no minimum.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.