What is made here
Wine colours
The only colour the rules allow.
Where it is
Pineau des Charentes in France
- Latitude
- 45.1°–46.3° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 5 m to 119 m
- Production zone
- 1,025,535 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.
01 · What the law says
The rules
Limits on grapes, yields, ripeness and ageing that every wine labelled Pineau des Charentes must meet.
Blend rules
Pineau des Charentes
- – cabernet franc / cabernet-sauvignon / colombard / folle blanche / jurançon blanc / merlot blanc / merlot noir / meslier Saint-François / montils / sauvignon / sémillon / trousseau gris / ugni blanc · Main grape
- ≤ 10% trousseau gris G (ou chauché gris G) · Allowed
At least 18 months' ageing; release from 1 April of the second year after the harvest.
Blend rules
Pineau des Charentes vieux
- – cabernet franc / cabernet-sauvignon / colombard / folle blanche / jurançon blanc / merlot blanc / merlot noir / meslier Saint-François / montils / sauvignon / sémillon / trousseau gris / ugni blanc · Main grape
- ≤ 10% trousseau gris G (ou chauché gris G) · Allowed
- – cabernet franc / cabernet-sauvignon / cot N (ou malbec N) / merlot noir · Main grape
; release from 1 October of the seventh year after the harvest.
Blend rules
Pineau des Charentes très vieux
- – cabernet franc / cabernet-sauvignon / colombard / folle blanche / jurançon blanc / merlot blanc / merlot noir / meslier Saint-François / montils / sauvignon / sémillon / trousseau gris / ugni blanc · Main grape
- ≤ 10% trousseau gris G (ou chauché gris G) · Allowed
- – cabernet franc / cabernet-sauvignon / cot N (ou malbec N) / merlot noir · Main grape
; release from 1 October of the twelfth year after the harvest.
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
2,200
Vines per hectare, minimum
Training
Systems allowed
taille Guyot simple ou double; taille en cordon
Prohibited
Irrigation
Not allowed
Enrichment (chaptalisation)
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 17.0 °C, warm on Gregory Jones's scale, with 1,494 growing degree days (Winkler II).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 55 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 17.0 °C
- Warm · 17–19 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 1,494
- Region II: 1,389–1,666 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 442 mm
- Of 826 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 140 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 35 m; Vineyard point 2, 1 m; Vineyard point 3, 114 m; Vineyard point 4, 93 m; Vineyard point 5, 31 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. NeusiedlerseeVery similarCompared with Pineau des Charentes: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. PannonhalmaVery similarCompared with Pineau des Charentes: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. MátraVery similarCompared with Pineau des Charentes: 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, 140 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: Pineau des Charentes (Cahier des charges de l'appellation d'origine contrôlée Pineau des Charentes - BO n°26 du 25 juin 2026) · Ministère de l'Agriculture (Bulletin officiel), as linked by INAO · Official act
- Climate profiles calculated by Vinous: method
Still to check (3)
- Generated from EU reference data: check against the current product specification.
- From the specification: Vins de liqueur made by muting grape must with Cognac from the same holding, finishing at 16–22% alcohol. Only 'Pineau des Charentes' is in the register; the rosé and red, the 'vieux' (over 7 years in oak) and 'très vieux'/'extra vieux' (over 12 years) mentions are added as products. Rosés are aged until at least 1 March and reds released from 1 October of the year after the harvest. The 'Ile de Ré' and 'Ile d'Oléron' additional names have stricter rules (2800 vines/ha, 11200 kg/ha, butoir 49 hl/ha of vin de liqueur) and are not register products; the must butoir is 85 hl/ha.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.