What is made here
Wine colours
Colours the rules allow. Pick a colour to filter the rules and grapes below.
Where it is
Saint-Sardos in France
- Latitude
- 43.8°–44.0° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 138 m to 184 m
- Production zone
- 41,205 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.
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-Sardos must meet.
Blend rules
Saint-Sardos
- ≥ 40% Syrah · Main grape
- ≥ 20% Tannat · Main grape
- – cabernet franc / merlot · Allowed
- ≤ 15% Merlot · Allowed
; release from 1 April 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.
2 varieties · Saint-Sardos, Saint-Sardos
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
4,000
Vines per hectare, minimum
Training
Systems allowed
taille Guyot simple; taille Guyot double; cordon bilatéral
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 1,674 growing degree days (Winkler III).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 171 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 17.8 °C
- Warm · 17–19 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 1,674
- Region III: 1,667–1,943 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 452 mm
- Of 753 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 117 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 179 m; Vineyard point 2, 178 m; Vineyard point 3, 138 m; Vineyard point 4, 184 m; Vineyard point 5, 175 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. Bordeaux supérieurVery similarCompared with Saint-Sardos: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. Lalande-de-PomerolVery similarCompared with Saint-Sardos: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. MargauxVery similarCompared with Saint-Sardos: 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, 117 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-Sardos (Cahier des charges relatifs aux appellations d’origines contrôlées suivantes 04/11 : Clos de la Roche, Latricières-Chambertin, Pineau des Charentes, Saint-Mont,) · 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: The syrah (at least 40%), tannat (at least 20%) and merlot (at most 15%) limits apply to the holding's vineyard (not to small growers who do not make wine); in red wines syrah and tannat together make at least 60% of the blend, with syrah the largest share and at most 80%; rosés must blend at least two varieties with syrah the largest. Rosés made by saignée need 189 g/l sugar like reds (180 g/l recorded for pressed rosés). Irrigated plots are limited to 7000 kg/ha. Red wines are aged (élevage) until at least 15 March after the harvest and hold at most 0.4 g/l malic acid; rosés are released under the general rule (article D. 645-17). Permitted pruning: Guyot simple (10 buds), Guyot double with two half-canes (8 buds), bilateral cordon.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.