What is made here
Wine colours
The only colour the rules allow.
Where it is
Ζίτσα in Greece
- Latitude
- 39.7°–39.8° N
- Production zone
- 9,189 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 Ζίτσα must meet.
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
Training
Systems allowed
κυπελλοειδή (goblet); γραμμοειδή (linear)
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 17.0 °C, warm on Gregory Jones's scale, with 1,520 growing degree days (Winkler II).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 732 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 17.0 °C
- Warm · 17–19 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 1,520
- Region II: 1,389–1,666 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 493 mm
- Of 1,243 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 212 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 1 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 732 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. CoteştiVery similarCompared with Ζίτσα: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. SomlóiVery similarCompared with Ζίτσα: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. Nagy-SomlóVery similarCompared with Ζίτσα: 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, 212 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
- ERA5-Land monthly averaged data (reanalysis-era5-land-monthly-means) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), Climate Data Store · CC BY 4.0 (Copernicus licence)
- Product specification: Ζίτσα (ΠΡΟΔΙΑΓΡΑΦΗ ΖΙΤΣΑ τελικο.doc) · National authority, as filed in the EU register (eAmbrosia) · Official document
- Climate profiles calculated by Vinous: method
Still to check (3)
- Generated from EU reference data: check against the current product specification.
- From the specification: 100% Debina. Quality sparkling wines may be made by bottle fermentation (classic method) or in closed tanks, so sparkling_method is null; minimum 3.5 bar. Semi-dry sparkling: total alcohol of the cuvée at least 11.0% vol. Sparkling yield is 75 hl/ha of base wine. Vines over four years from grafting; white fermentation below 20 °C.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.