What is made here
Wine colours
Colours the rules allow. Pick a colour to filter the rules and grapes below.
Where it is
Sainte-Foy-Bordeaux in France
- Latitude
- 44.7°–44.9° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 27 m to 112 m
- Production zone
- 20,869 ha
Lies within
Bordeaux supérieur, Bordeaux, Crémant de Bordeaux
Worked out from the boundaries (smallest container first). They follow whole communes, so a neighbour sharing a commune can show up here too.
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 Sainte-Foy-Bordeaux must meet.
Blend rules
Sainte-Foy-Bordeaux Liquoreux
- ≥ 85% muscadelle / sauvignon / sauvignon gris / sémillon · Main grape
- ≤ 25% colombard / ugni blanc · Allowed
; release from 31 March of the year after the harvest.
Blend rules
Sainte-Foy-Bordeaux
- ≥ 85% muscadelle / sauvignon / sauvignon gris / sémillon · Main grape
- ≤ 25% colombard / ugni blanc · Allowed
; release from 31 March of the year after the harvest.
Blend rules
Sainte-Foy-Bordeaux Molleaux
- ≥ 85% muscadelle / sauvignon / sauvignon gris / sémillon · Main grape
- ≤ 25% colombard / ugni blanc · Allowed
; release from 1 January 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 · Sainte-Foy-Bordeaux Liquoreux, Sainte-Foy-Bordeaux, Sainte-Foy-Bordeaux Molleaux
2 varieties · Sainte-Foy-Bordeaux
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
4,500
Vines per hectare, minimum
Training
Systems allowed
taille à cots (coursons); taille à astes (longs bois)
Allowed
Enrichment (chaptalisation)
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 17.9 °C, warm on Gregory Jones's scale, with 1,694 growing degree days (Winkler III).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 70 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 17.9 °C
- Warm · 17–19 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 1,694
- Region III: 1,667–1,943 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 467 mm
- Of 810 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 131 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 109 m; Vineyard point 2, 26 m; Vineyard point 3, 105 m; Vineyard point 4, 99 m; Vineyard point 5, 11 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. Premières Côtes de BordeauxVery similarCompared with Sainte-Foy-Bordeaux: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. Graves supérieuresVery similarCompared with Sainte-Foy-Bordeaux: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. PomerolVery similarCompared with Sainte-Foy-Bordeaux: 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, 131 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: Sainte-Foy-Bordeaux (Cahier des charges relatifs aux appellations d’origines contrôlées suivantes : Saumur et Cabernet de Saumur, Sainte-Foy-Bordeaux, Coteaux du Giennois, Côte Rôti) · Ministère de l'Agriculture (Bulletin officiel), as linked by INAO · Official act
- 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 85% minimum for principal varieties and the 10% cap on carmenère apply to the holding's vineyard; the 25% cap on accessory varieties applies to the blend. Minimum grape sugar: 200 g/l for reds and 178 g/l for dry whites when made from merlot or sauvignon, 189 g/l and 170 g/l for other varieties; the lower figure is recorded. 'Molleaux' is the register's spelling of moelleux. Red wines and liquoreux are aged (élevage) until at least 15 March of the year after the harvest and moelleux until 15 December of the harvest year; liquoreux come from noble rot and/or passerillage, hand-picked in successive tries, and may not be enriched. Dry whites are released under the general rule (article D. 645-17).
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.