What is made here
Wine colours
Colours the rules allow. Pick a colour to filter the rules and grapes below.
Where it is
Montsant in Spain
- Latitude
- 40.9°–41.4° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 197 m to 645 m
- Production zone
- 62,654 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 Montsant must meet.
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
17 varieties · Montsant (liqueur wine), Montsant liqueur wine Grenache
Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Garnacha Blanca, Garnacha Peluda, Garnacha Roja, Grenache, Macabeo, Mazuela, Merlot, Moscatel de Grano Menudo, Mourvèdre, Parellada, Picapoll Blanco, Picapoll Negro, Syrah, Tempranillo, Xarello
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
Permitted
Irrigation
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 18.9 °C, warm on Gregory Jones's scale, with 1,901 growing degree days (Winkler III).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 470 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 18.9 °C
- Warm · 17–19 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 1,901
- Region III: 1,667–1,943 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 321 mm
- Of 504 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 126 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 495 m; Vineyard point 2, 576 m; Vineyard point 3, 267 m; Vineyard point 4, 573 m; Vineyard point 5, 437 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. MandrolisaiVery similarCompared with Montsant: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. Banyuls grand cruVery similarCompared with Montsant: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. BanyulsVery similarCompared with Montsant: 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, 126 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: Montsant (Official Journal C 351, 14.9.2022; and the technical file 'Ares(2014)2158392' 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 lists only five varieties (Cabernet Sauvignon, Garnacha Blanca, Garnacha Tinta, Mazuela – Cariñena, Mazuela – Samsó) without shares; section 8 mentions others. Liqueur wines include rancio, white and red mistela, Grenache, Vimblanc (overripe Pansal grapes) and natural sweet wine from musts above 272 g/l sugar; their acidity limit is left blank. Rosé yields follow the white or red variety limits. Wines must be bottled in registered bottling wineries.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.