What is made here
Wine colours
Colours the rules allow. Pick a colour to filter the rules and grapes below.
Where it is
Rasteau in France
- Latitude
- 44.2°–44.3° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 128 m to 306 m
- Delimited vineyard land
- 1,790 ha
Lies within
Côtes du Rhône Villages, Côtes du Rhône
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 Rasteau must meet.
Blend rules
Rasteau Ambré
- ≥ 90% grenache / grenache gris / grenache blanc · Main grape
- ≤ 10% cépages accessoires · Allowed
; release from 1 March of the third year after the harvest.
Blend rules
Rasteau Grenat
- ≥ 75% Grenache · Main grape
- ≥ 90% grenache / grenache gris / grenache blanc · Main grape
- ≤ 10% cépages accessoires · Allowed
; release from 1 May of the year after the harvest.
Blend rules
Rasteau Tuilé
- ≥ 75% Grenache · Main grape
- ≥ 90% grenache / grenache gris / grenache blanc · Main grape
- ≤ 10% cépages accessoires · Allowed
; release from 1 March of the third year after the harvest.
Blend rules
Rasteau Rosé
- ≥ 90% grenache / grenache gris / grenache blanc · Main grape
- ≤ 10% cépages accessoires · Allowed
Blend rules
Rasteau Blanc
- ≥ 90% grenache gris / grenache blanc · Main grape
- ≤ 10% cépages accessoires · Allowed
; release from 1 May of the year after the harvest.
Blend rules
Rasteau
- ≥ 50% Grenache · Main grape
- ≥ 20% mourvèdre / syrah · Allowed
- ≤ 20% carignan / cinsaut · Allowed
- ≤ 15% other cépages accessoires · Allowed
- ≤ 5% white varieties · Allowed
; release from 31 March of the year after the harvest.
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
17 varieties · 5 wines
Bourboulenc, Brun Argenté, Carignan, Cinsaut, Clairette, Clairette Rose, Counoise, Marsanne, Mourvèdre, Muscardin, Piquepoul Blanc, Piquepoul Noir, Roussanne, Syrah, Terret Noir, Ugni Blanc, Viognier
19 varieties · Rasteau
Bourboulenc, Brun Argenté, Carignan, Cinsaut, Clairette, Clairette Rose, Counoise, Grenache Blanc, Grenache Gris, Marsanne, Mourvèdre, Muscardin, Piquepoul Blanc, Piquepoul Noir, Roussanne, Syrah, Terret Noir, Ugni Blanc, Viognier
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
4,000
Vines per hectare, minimum
Training
Systems allowed
taille courte à coursons; cordon de Royat; taille Guyot simple (syrah N, still wines, vines over 20 years)
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 18.1 °C, warm on Gregory Jones's scale, with 1,743 growing degree days (Winkler III).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 233 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 18.1 °C
- Warm · 17–19 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 1,743
- Region III: 1,667–1,943 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 447 mm
- Of 772 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 181 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 257 m; Vineyard point 2, 122 m; Vineyard point 3, 331 m; Vineyard point 4, 136 m; Vineyard point 5, 319 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. Hrvatsko PodunavljeVery similarCompared with Rasteau: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. SannioVery similarCompared with Rasteau: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. CapriVery similarCompared with Rasteau: 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, 181 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: Rasteau (Cahier des charges de l'appellation d'origine contrôlée Rasteau, homologué par l'arrêté du 11 janvier 2024 (AGRT2328906A) - BO n°4 du 25 janvier 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 (4)
- Generated from EU reference data: check against the current product specification.
- Irrigation recorded as 'Allowed/Prohibited'.
- From the specification: Still red Rasteau: grape rules apply to the holding's plantings (principal plus complementary at least 60% of the blend); minimum grape sugar 216 g/l for grenache N and 207 g/l for other varieties; maximum residual sugar 3 g/l (4 g/l above 14% natural alcohol); aged until at least 15 March after harvest; enrichment permitted up to 14% total, whereas enrichment is prohibited for the vins doux naturels. The VDN types are mutaged with 5-10% neutral spirit; blanc and grenat are aged reductively to 1 May after harvest, ambré and tuilé oxidatively to 1 March of the third year (hors d'âge to 1 September of the fifth year, a label mention not in the register), and accessory limits (10%) apply per parcel.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.