What is made here
Wine colours
Colours the rules allow. Pick a colour to filter the rules and grapes below.
Where it is
Pessac-Léognan in France
- Latitude
- 44.7°–44.9° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 14 m to 55 m
- Delimited vineyard land
- 4,488 ha
Lies within
Graves supérieures, Graves
Worked out from the boundaries (smallest container first). Uses the delimited parcels where INAO publishes them.
The delimited vineyard parcels themselves, so the shape is patchy: only land within them may grow the wine. Boundary: INAO parcel delimitation (Licence Ouverte); nearby parcels drawn as one block, with less detail for larger appellations. 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 Pessac-Léognan must meet.
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
6,500
Vines per hectare, minimum
Training
Systems allowed
taille à cots et à astes; taille à cots à 2 cordons; éventail à 4 bras
Permitted, with limits
Irrigation
Allowed
Enrichment (chaptalisation)
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 17.8 °C, warm on Gregory Jones's scale, with 1,671 growing degree days (Winkler III).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 39 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 17.8 °C
- Warm · 17–19 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 1,671
- Region III: 1,667–1,943 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 471 mm
- Of 823 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 135 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 31 m; Vineyard point 2, 55 m; Vineyard point 3, 29 m; Vineyard point 4, 59 m; Vineyard point 5, 19 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. MontravelVery similarCompared with Pessac-Léognan: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. Minervois-la-LivinièreVery similarCompared with Pessac-Léognan: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. Côtes de MontravelVery similarCompared with Pessac-Léognan: 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, 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
- 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: Pessac-Léognan (Cahier des charges de l'appellation d'origine contrôlée Pessac-Léognan, homologué par arrêté du 10 décembre 2024 (AGRT2425026A) - BO n°51 du 19 décembre 2024) · Ministère de l'Agriculture (Bulletin officiel), as linked by INAO · Official act
- Délimitation parcellaire des AOC viticoles de l'INAO · Institut national de l'origine et de la qualité (INAO), via data.gouv.fr · Licence Ouverte / Open Licence (Etalab)
- 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: The register lists one name but the text governs red and white, so the white is added. Minimum grape sugar depends on variety (merlot 189, other black 180, sauvignon 187, other white 178 g/l); reds are aged until at least 15 September and whites until 15 March after the harvest; irrigated parcels are limited to 7000 kg/ha; chemical weedkilling of whole parcels and headlands is banned.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.