What is made here
Wine colours
Colours the rules allow. Pick a colour to filter the rules and grapes below.
Where it is
Terra Alta in Spain
- Latitude
- 40.8°–41.2° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 230 m to 423 m
- Production zone
- 74,207 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 Terra Alta must meet.
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
18 varieties · Terra Alta Espumosos de calidad, Terra Alta Vino de licor, Terra Alta Vinos de aguja
Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, Garnacha Blanca, Garnacha Peluda, Grenache, Macabeo, Mazuela, Merlot, Moscatel de Alejandria, Moscatel de Grano Menudo, Parellada, Pedro Ximénez, Sauvignon Blanc, Syrah, Tempranillo, Viognier
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 19.6 °C, hot on Gregory Jones's scale, with 2,055 growing degree days (Winkler IV).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 358 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 19.6 °C
- Hot · 19–21 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 2,055
- Region IV: 1,944–2,221 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 295 mm
- Of 470 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 103 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 392 m; Vineyard point 2, 490 m; Vineyard point 3, 241 m; Vineyard point 4, 331 m; Vineyard point 5, 336 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. Chozas CarrascalVery similarCompared with Terra Alta: same season warmth, drier (−33 mm).
2. FaroVery similarCompared with Terra Alta: same season warmth, wetter (+61 mm).
3. MateraVery similarCompared with Terra Alta: 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, 103 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: Terra Alta (Ares(2014)2158377) · 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); the analytical table's layout is broken, so the alcohol figures are read as minimum acquired strength. Yields are 56 hl/ha for red and 70 hl/ha for white varieties (rosé not stated separately). Liqueur wines cover Mistela blanca/negra (at least 14 % vol acquired), vino dulce natural, vino rancio (oxidative ageing with at least 1 year in oak) and vino garnacha from overripe grapes; traditional terms Crianza, Reserva, Gran Reserva and Rancio are registered without ageing periods in this document.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.