What is made here
Wine colours
Colours the rules allow. Pick a colour to filter the rules and grapes below.
Where it is
Saint-Chinian in France
- Latitude
- 43.3°–43.6° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 62 m to 304 m
- Delimited vineyard land
- 20,816 ha
Lies within
Languedoc
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 Saint-Chinian must meet.
Blend rules
Saint-Chinian Berlou
- ≥ 40% grenache / mourvèdre / syrah · Main grape
- ≥ 10% Carignan · Allowed
- ≥ 20% Grenache · Main grape
- ≥ 20% Syrah · Main grape
; release from 1 December of the year after the harvest.
Blend rules
Saint-Chinian Roquebrun
- – grenache / syrah · Main grape
- ≥ 70% grenache / mourvèdre / syrah · Main grape
- ≥ 25% Syrah · Main grape
- ≥ 20% Grenache · Main grape
- – carignan / mourvèdre · Allowed
- ≤ 30% Mourvèdre · Allowed
; release from 1 December of the year after the harvest.
Blend rules
Saint-Chinian
- ≥ 60% carignan / cinsaut / grenache / lledoner pelut / mourvèdre / syrah · Main grape
- ≤ 50% carignan / cinsaut · Main grape
- – piquepoul / rivairenc · Allowed
- ≤ 10% counoise / marselan / morrastel / œillade / terret · Allowed
; release from 15 January of the year after the harvest.
Blend rules
Saint-Chinian blanc
- ≥ 70% grenache blanc / marsanne / roussanne / vermentino · Main grape
- ≥ 20% Grenache Blanc · Main grape
- – bourboulenc / carignan blanc / clairette / grenache / viognier · Allowed
- ≤ 10% Viognier · Allowed
- ≤ 10% piquepoul / terret · Allowed
Blend rules
Saint-Chinian rosé
- ≥ 60% carignan / cinsaut / grenache / lledoner pelut / mourvèdre / syrah · Main grape
- – piquepoul / rivairenc / grenache / grenache / marsanne / roussanne / vermentino / bourboulenc / carignan / clairette / viognier · Allowed
- ≤ 20% white accessory varieties · Allowed
- ≤ 10% counoise / marselan / morrastel / œillade / terret / piquepoul / terret · Allowed
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
1 varieties · Saint-Chinian Berlou
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
4,000
Vines per hectare, minimum
Training
Systems allowed
taille courte à coursons; taille Guyot simple (syrah N only)
Permitted
Irrigation
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 18.5 °C, warm on Gregory Jones's scale, with 1,830 growing degree days (Winkler III).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 87 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 18.5 °C
- Warm · 17–19 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 1,830
- Region III: 1,667–1,943 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 542 mm
- Of 962 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 257 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 89 m; Vineyard point 2, 121 m; Vineyard point 3, 138 m; Vineyard point 4, 38 m; Vineyard point 5, 48 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.
Lower confidence:Monthly reanalysis in complex terrain (height corrections up to 2.8 °C); absolute values may be several degrees out, year-to-year changes are more reliable.
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. Sangue di GiudaVery similarCompared with Saint-Chinian: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. PominoVery similarCompared with Saint-Chinian: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. Côtes du RoussillonVery similarCompared with Saint-Chinian: 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, 257 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: Saint-Chinian (Cahier des charges de l’appellation d’origine contrôlée Saint-Chinian, homologué par arrêté du 9 décembre 2024 (AGRT2428436A) - 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 only Saint-Chinian and its red-only Berlou and Roquebrun names; white and rosé wines, governed separately, are added. Figures the checker cannot read are left null: density minimum 4 000 plants/ha, maximum parcel load 8 500 kg/ha (Saint-Chinian) and 7 500 kg/ha (Berlou, Roquebrun) (6 500 / 5 500 when irrigated), and red residual sugar of 3 g/l (natural alcohol up to 14%) or 4 g/l above. Berlou carignan must reach 214 g/l sugar. Reds are aged until 1 January (Saint-Chinian) or 15 November (Berlou, Roquebrun) of the year after the harvest; Berlou and Roquebrun are hand-picked, short-pruned to 6 spurs and need 30% carignan (Berlou) in the vineyard. Grape limits mix vineyard (encépagement) and blend (assemblage) rules as quoted.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.