What is made here
Wine colours
Colours the rules allow. Pick a colour to filter the rules and grapes below.
Where it is
Yecla in Spain
- Latitude
- 38.4°–38.8° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 540 m to 719 m
- Production zone
- 60,569 ha
Lies within
Alicante, Valdeorras
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 Yecla must meet.
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
16 varieties · Yecla (liqueur wine), Yecla (sparkling wine)
Airén, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Garnacha Tintoréra, Grenache, Macabeo, Malvasía Aromatica, Merlot, Merseguera, Moscatel de Grano Menudo, Mourvèdre, Petit Verdot, Sauvignon Blanc, Syrah, Tempranillo, Verdejo
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
1,100
Vines per hectare, minimum
Training
Systems allowed
gobelet and variants; trellising and variants
Permitted
Irrigation
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 19.8 °C, hot on Gregory Jones's scale, with 2,108 growing degree days (Winkler IV).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 669 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 19.8 °C
- Hot · 19–21 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 2,108
- Region IV: 1,944–2,221 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 199 mm
- Of 346 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 76 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 610 m; Vineyard point 2, 737 m; Vineyard point 3, 652 m; Vineyard point 4, 772 m; Vineyard point 5, 573 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. La JarabaVery similarCompared with Yecla: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. JumillaVery similarCompared with Yecla: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. Los CerrillosVery similarCompared with Yecla: same season warmth, wetter (+25 mm).
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, 76 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: Yecla (Official Journal C, C/2024/3268, 27.5.2024; and the technical file 'Ares(2014)2132132_EN' 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: Varieties (17): Airén, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Garnacha Tinta, Garnacha Tintorera, Macabeo - Viura, Malvasía Aromática, Merlot, Merseguera, Monastrell, Moscatel de Grano Menudo, Petit Verdot, Sauvignon Blanc, Syrah, Tempranillo, Verdejo, Viognier. Yields recorded are the irrigated limits; non-irrigated plantations are limited to 4,500 kg/ha (33.3 hl/ha) for white and 4,000 kg/ha (29.6 hl/ha) for red varieties. Minimum grape ripeness is given in degrees Baumé (11 °Bé red, 10 °Bé white, 13 °Bé for liqueur wines), not % vol. Wines may be dry, semi-sweet or sweet; continuous presses and high-speed centrifugal crushers are prohibited. The older technical file (Ares(2014)2132132) gives minimum natural strength in % vol (white 10, rosé 11, red 12, liqueur 12), recorded here; its liqueur figure differs from the 13 °Bé of the current document. Minimum density is 1 100 plants/ha unirrigated and 1 600 irrigated. That file also differs on values kept here: red minimum actual alcohol 12.5 % vol, 70 litres per 100 kg, and 63 hl/ha (white) and 49 hl/ha (red) on irrigable land.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.