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
El Vicario in Spain
- Latitude
- 38.8°–39.1° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 618 m to 629 m
- Production zone
- 28,506 ha
Lies within
La Mancha
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 Vicario must meet.
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
9 varieties · El Vicario (wine)
Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Graciano, Grenache, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Sauvignon Blanc, Syrah, Tempranillo
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 20.6 °C, hot on Gregory Jones's scale, with 2,271 growing degree days (Winkler V).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 621 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 20.6 °C
- Hot · 19–21 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 2,271
- Region V: 2,222 and over degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 210 mm
- Of 440 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 82 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 629 m; Vineyard point 2, 618 m; Vineyard point 3, 619 m; Vineyard point 4, 621 m; Vineyard point 5, 620 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. MálagaVery similarCompared with El Vicario: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. Sierras de MálagaVery similarCompared with El Vicario: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. Ribera del GuadianaVery similarCompared with El Vicario: 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, 82 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: El Vicario
- 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: Vino de pago. Section 7 names Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Tempranillo – Cencibel and Merlot as main grapes without shares. Yields are set per variety: Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc and Merlot 9,000 kg and 63 hl/ha; Tempranillo for red, Syrah and Garnacha Tinta 12,000 kg and 84 hl/ha; Cabernet Sauvignon 10,000 kg and 70 hl/ha; Graciano and Petit Verdot 13,500 kg and 94.5 hl/ha. For barrel-fermented white wine at least 15 % of the must ferments on lees for 4–8 months in European oak; all reds are aged in 225–300 litre oak barrels (no minimum period stated). The 45 g/l sugar footnote is attached to the sweet red wine.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.