What is made here
Wine colours
The only colour the rules allow.
Where it is
Champagne in France
- Latitude
- 47.9°–49.4° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 95 m to 287 m
- Production zone
- 354,439 ha
Covers the same area as
Coteaux champenois
Contains 1 appellation (outlined on the zone map)
Rosé des Riceys
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.
01 · What the law says
The rules
Limits on grapes, yields, ripeness and ageing that every wine labelled Champagne must meet.
Blend rules
Champagne
- ≥ 90% Arbane / Chardonnay / Chardonnay rose / Meunier / Petit meslier / Pinot blanc / Pinot gris / Pinot noir · Main grape
- ≤ 10% Voltis · Allowed
At least 15 months' ageing; release from 15 months after tirage (36 months for vintage wines).
Blend rules
Champagne Grand Cru
- ≥ 90% Arbane / Chardonnay / Chardonnay rose / Meunier / Petit meslier / Pinot blanc / Pinot gris / Pinot noir · Main grape
- ≤ 10% Voltis · Allowed
At least 15 months' ageing; release from 15 months after tirage (36 months for vintage wines).
Blend rules
Champagne Premier Cru
- ≥ 90% Arbane / Chardonnay / Chardonnay rose / Meunier / Petit meslier / Pinot blanc / Pinot gris / Pinot noir · Main grape
- ≤ 10% Voltis · Allowed
At least 15 months' ageing; release from 15 months after tirage (36 months for vintage wines).
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
Training
Systems allowed
taille Chablis; cordon de Royat; taille de la Vallée de la Marne (meunier only); taille Guyot simple; Guyot double; Guyot asymétrique
Prohibited
Irrigation
Allowed
Enrichment (chaptalisation)
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 15.1 °C, intermediate on Gregory Jones's scale, with 1,124 growing degree days (Winkler Ib).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 193 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 15.1 °C
- Intermediate · 15–17 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 1,124
- Region Ib: 1,111–1,388 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 477 mm
- Of 858 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 139 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 162 m; Vineyard point 2, 297 m; Vineyard point 3, 145 m; Vineyard point 4, 98 m; Vineyard point 5, 262 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. Hessische BergstraßeVery similarCompared with Champagne: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. MittelrheinVery similarCompared with Champagne: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. SachsenVery similarCompared with Champagne: 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, 139 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
- Quality wines in Italy and France: a dataset of PDO specifications · figshare 25393261 · CC BY 4.0
- 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
- Cahier des charges: Champagne (Cahier des charges de l’appellation d'origine contrôlée Champagne, homologué par l'arrêté du 31 juillet 2025 (AGRT2518163A) - BO n°32 du 7 août 2025) · Ministère de l'Agriculture (Bulletin officiel), as linked by INAO · Official act
- 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: White and rosé sparkling wines (rosé by direct pressing, maceration, saignée or blending white and red before tirage). Yield is set in grapes: rendement 12,400 kg/ha, butoir 15,500 kg/ha, with at most 102 litres per 160 kg; density is set by spacing (rows max 2.00 m, row plus vine spacing max 3.00 m). Vintage wines need 36 months from tirage before release and may not exceed 80% of the year's volume; the 10 g/l sugar limit applies after prise de mousse, before dosage. Grand cru and premier cru depend only on the commune of origin (17 grand cru communes, 42 further premier cru communes) and carry no separate production rules in chapter I. Vineyard: principal varieties at least 95%, Voltis at most 5%.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.