What is made here
Wine colours
Colours the rules allow. Pick a colour to filter the rules and grapes below.
Where it is
El Hierro in Spain
- Latitude
- 27.6°–27.9° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 204 m to 554 m
- Production zone
- 26,858 ha
Lies within
Islas Canarias
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 El Hierro must meet.
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
22 varieties · El Hierro Vino de licor, El Hierro Vino espumoso, El Hierro Dulce Clásico
Albillo, Bastardo Blanco, Bastardo Negro, Bermejuela, Breval, Burrablanca, Forastera Blanca, Gual, Listán Blanco de Canarias, Listán Negro, Malvasía Aromatica, Malvasía Rosada, Malvasía Volcánica, Moscatel Negro, Moscatel de Alejandria, Negramoll, Pedro Ximénez, Tintilla, Torrontés, Verdello, Vijariego Blanco, Vijariego Negro
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
Training
Systems allowed
vaso; parral bajo; espaldera (Guyot or Cordon Royat pruning)
Permitted, with limits
Irrigation
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 20.1 °C, hot on Gregory Jones's scale, with 2,159 growing degree days (Winkler IV).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 345 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 20.1 °C
- Hot · 19–21 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 2,159
- Region IV: 1,944–2,221 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 38 mm
- Of 137 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 21 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 204 m; Vineyard point 2, 17 m; Vineyard point 3, 298 m; Vineyard point 4, 678 m; Vineyard point 5, 527 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 2.6 °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. Λαόνα ΑκάμαVery similarCompared with El Hierro: same season warmth, wetter (+66 mm).
2. Μοσχάτος ΡόδουVery similarCompared with El Hierro: same season warmth, wetter (+60 mm).
3. Μονεμβασία- MalvasiaVery similarCompared with El Hierro: same season warmth, wetter (+83 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, 21 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
- Technical file: El Hierro (Ares(2014)2154015) · 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: Source is the 2014 technical file (single document in Spanish). Minimum must weight at harvest varies by variety: 11° Baumé (Burrablanca, Listán Blanco, Albillo Criollo, Forastera Blanca, Verdello, Breval, Torrontés, Malvasía Rosada), 12° Bé (Listán Negro, Negramoll, Moscatel Negro, Baboso Blanco, Bermejuela, Pedro Ximénez, Gual) and 13° Bé (Malvasías, Moscatel, Vijariego, Baboso Negro, Tintilla); the lowest is recorded. One yield (15,000 kg/ha, 111 hl/ha) applies to all wines. Bottling only at registered wineries.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.