Vinous

DO · Appellation profile

Tarragona

191,078 haProduction zone
7Wines in the rules
20.6 °CGrowing season · hot
VWinkler region

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

Tarragona in Spain

Latitude
40.9°–41.4° N
Vineyard altitude
77 m to 464 m
Production zone
191,078 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 Tarragona must meet.

7 wines in the rules, all colours.
WineMain grape(s)Max yield
t/ha
Max wine
hl/ha
Wine from grapes
max. %
Grape ripeness
min. % pot. alc.
Actual alc.
min. %
Acidity
min. g/l
Tarragona (quality sparkling wine) Macabeo – Viura, Tempranillo – Ull de Llebre––70109.53.5
Tarragona (semi-sparkling wine) Macabeo – Viura, Tempranillo – Ull de Llebre––70107–
Tarragona white wine and orange wine Macabeo – Viura, Tempranillo – Ull de Llebre128470109.53.5
Tarragona rosé wine Macabeo – Viura, Tempranillo – Ull de Llebre––70109.53.5
Tarragona red wine Macabeo – Viura, Tempranillo – Ull de Llebre107070109.53.5
Tarragona liqueur wine: ‘Mistela’, ‘Moscatel’, ‘Garnacha’, ‘Rancio’ Macabeo – Viura, Tempranillo – Ull de Llebre––701015–
Tarragona wine from raisined grapes: ‘Vimblanc’ Macabeo – Viura, Tempranillo – Ull de Llebre––70109–

From the official production rules (EU single document, Official Journal). Hover a figure to see the clause it comes from. A dash means the rules set no figure, or it is not captured yet.

Other varieties allowed

Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.

19 varieties · 4 wines

Alarije, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Garnacha Blanca, Grenache, Macabeo, Mazuela, Merlot, Moscatel de Alejandria, Moscatel de Grano Menudo, Mourvèdre, Parellada, Pinot Noir, Sauvignon Blanc, Sumoll Tinto, Syrah, Tempranillo, Trepat, Xarello

In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine

2,000
Vines per hectare, minimum
Permitted, with limits
Irrigation

02 · Climate fingerprint

The climate

The growing season averages 20.6 °C, hot on Gregory Jones's scale, with 2,262 growing degree days (Winkler V).

The average year  1991–2020, vineyards at about 88 m

Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
8.0° 38 Jan 9.1° 28 Feb 12.1° 41 Mar 14.4° 55 Apr 18.1° 53 May 22.4° 31 Jun 25.1° 22 Jul 25.1° 42 Aug 21.4° 69 Sep 17.4° 66 Oct 12.1° 48 Nov 8.7° 36 Dec
Growing-season temperature
20.6 °C
Hot · 19–21 °C (Jones)
Growing degree days
2,262
Region V: 2,222 and over degree days
Growing-season rain
338 mm
Of 528 mm a year
Harvest rain
135 mm
September–October

Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 176 m; Vineyard point 2, 71 m; Vineyard point 3, 119 m; Vineyard point 4, 52 m; Vineyard point 5, 20 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. Cacc'e mmitte di LuceraVery similarCompared with Tarragona: same season warmth, drier (−58 mm).
2. Moscato di TraniVery similarCompared with Tarragona: same season warmth, drier (−50 mm).
3. Castel del Monte Bombino NeroVery similarCompared with Tarragona: same season warmth, similar rain.

Growing-season temperature

Tarragona
20.6 °C
Cacc'e mmitte di Lucera
20.6 °C
Moscato di Trani
20.7 °C
Castel del Monte Bombino Nero
20.4 °C

Growing degree days

Tarragona
2,262
Cacc'e mmitte di Lucera
2,258
Moscato di Trani
2,284
Castel del Monte Bombino Nero
2,232

Growing-season rain

Tarragona
338 mm
Cacc'e mmitte di Lucera
280 mm
Moscato di Trani
288 mm
Castel del Monte Bombino Nero
305 mm

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, 135 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

  1. 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
  2. ERA5-Land monthly averaged data (reanalysis-era5-land-monthly-means) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), Climate Data Store · CC BY 4.0 (Copernicus licence)
  3. OpenStreetMap vineyard areas (landuse=vineyard), from Geofabrik country extracts · OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL 1.0
  4. Copernicus DEM GLO-90 (AWS open data tiles) · European Space Agency / Copernicus · Copernicus DEM licence
  5. Single document: Tarragona (Official Journal C 2023/892, 10.11.2023; and the technical file 'Ares(2014)2158227' from the EU register) · European Union, Official Journal (C series) · EU law (Commission reuse policy)
  6. Appellation nesting worked out from boundaries (pipeline/build_nesting.py) · Vinous, from the Eurac PDO boundaries · CC0 (source data)
  7. 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 Macabeo – Viura and Tempranillo – Ull de Llebre, without shares. Quality sparkling wine may be made by the traditional method or the 'méthode ancestrale', so no single method is recorded; it has a maximum total acidity of 6 g/l. Yields apply to the white and red varieties; rosé, sparkling and sweet wines follow them. 'Rancio' liqueur wine is dry. The older national technical file gives higher minimum actual strengths than the single document (white and rosé 10 % vol, red 10.5 % vol, semi-sparkling 10 % vol); the single-document values are kept.
  • National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.