What is made here
Wine colours
Colours the rules allow. Pick a colour to filter the rules and grapes below.
Where it is
Valdepeñas in Spain
- Latitude
- 38.5°–39.1° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 677 m to 849 m
- Production zone
- 246,220 ha
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 Valdepeñas must meet.
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
12 varieties · Valdepeñas sparkling wine
Airén, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Grenache, Macabeo, Merlot, Moscatel de Grano Menudo, Petit Verdot, Sauvignon Blanc, Syrah, Tempranillo, Verdejo
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 20.0 °C, hot on Gregory Jones's scale, with 2,137 growing degree days (Winkler IV).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 779 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 20.0 °C
- Hot · 19–21 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 2,137
- Region IV: 1,944–2,221 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 232 mm
- Of 484 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 84 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 755 m; Vineyard point 2, 744 m; Vineyard point 3, 886 m; Vineyard point 4, 669 m; Vineyard point 5, 843 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. Πλαγιές ΜελίτωναVery similarCompared with Valdepeñas: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. BullasVery similarCompared with Valdepeñas: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. La ManchaVery similarCompared with Valdepeñas: 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, 84 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: Valdepeñas (Official Journal C 5, 9.01.2020; and the technical file 'Ares(2014)2125907' from the EU register) · European Union, Official Journal (C series) · EU law (Commission reuse policy)
- Climate profiles calculated by Vinous: method
Still to check (3)
- Generated from EU reference data: check against the current product specification.
- From the specification: Main varieties only are listed (section 7); grape shares are not given. Yields are given per grape colour (white 8 000 kg/ha, red 7 500 kg/ha; lower limits for vines in the third year after grafting), so rosé, traditional red and sparkling yields are left null. The document gives no ageing periods for Crianza, Reserva or Gran Reserva and no sparkling method; quality sparkling wines may be labelled 'Premium' and 'Reserva'. Fermentation temperatures are capped (white 18 °C, rosé and red after pressing 25 °C). The 2014 technical file (Spanish) gives lower maximum yields than the single document (white 7,500 kg/ha and 52.5 hl/ha, red 6,000 kg/ha and 42 hl/ha); the single-document values are kept. It adds no ageing periods.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.