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
Cariñena in Spain
- Latitude
- 41.2°–41.5° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 478 m to 747 m
- Production zone
- 77,737 ha
Contains 1 appellation (outlined on the zone map)
Aylés
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 Cariñena must meet.
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
16 varieties · 5 wines
Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Garnacha Blanca, Grenache, Macabeo, Mazuela, Merlot, Moristel, Moscatel de Alejandria, Mourvèdre, Parellada, Sauvignon Blanc, Syrah, Tempranillo, Verdejo, Vidadillo
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
1,500
Vines per hectare, minimum
Permitted
Irrigation
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 18.5 °C, warm on Gregory Jones's scale, with 1,817 growing degree days (Winkler III).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 592 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 18.5 °C
- Warm · 17–19 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 1,817
- Region III: 1,667–1,943 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 270 mm
- Of 453 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 77 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 573 m; Vineyard point 2, 389 m; Vineyard point 3, 554 m; Vineyard point 4, 622 m; Vineyard point 5, 820 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. Vera de EstenasVery similarCompared with Cariñena: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. El TerrerazoVery similarCompared with Cariñena: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. CalzadillaVery similarCompared with Cariñena: 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, 77 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: Cariñena (Official Journal C, C/2025/6770, 22.12.2025; and the technical file 'Ares(2014)2153179' 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: Varieties (section 8): Cabernet Sauvignon, Cariñena Blanca, Chardonnay, Garnacha Blanca, Garnacha Tinta, Macabeo – Viura, Mazuela – Cariñena, Merlot, Monastrell, Moristel – Juan Ibáñez, Moscatel de Alejandría, Parellada, Sauvignon Blanc, Syrah, Tempranillo, Verdejo, Vidadillo; no shares are set. Yields are set by grape colour (red 8,500 kg/ha and 62.9 hl/ha; white 9,000 kg/ha and 66.6 hl/ha) and are not assigned to rosé, sparkling, liqueur or overripe-grape wines. Partially dealcoholised white, rosé and red wines (0.5–8.5 % vol., minimum acidity 4 g/l) are allowed, dealcoholised only within the area. White and rosé wines share one set of limits in the document. Technical file (Spanish): grapes for the PDO must have at least 170 g of sugar per litre of must; heating grapes, musts or wines on the skins to extract colour is not allowed; it gives liqueur wine minimum acidity as "4,5 en miliequivalentes por litro", which conflicts with the 3.5 g/l recorded; vine density at most 4,000 per hectare. Traditional terms Viejo, Superior, Reserva, Rancio, Noble, Gran reserva, Crianza, Clásico and Añejo are listed without ageing periods.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.