What is made here
Wine colours
Colours the rules allow.
The source gives no colour for 1 wine category here, so the colours below are incomplete.
Where it is
Balaton in Hungary
- Latitude
- 46.2°–47.3° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 127 m to 292 m
- Production zone
- 352,635 ha
Contains 10 appellations (outlined on the zone map)
Badacsony, Balaton-felvidék, Balatonboglár, Balatonfüred-Csopak, Csopak, Káli, Nagy-Somló, Somlói, Tihany, Zala
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 Balaton must meet.
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
17 varieties · Balaton (sparkling wine), Balaton (wine)
Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Chasselas, Cserszegi Füszeres, Ezerjó, Furmint, Hárslevelü, Kadarka, Kékfrankos, Merlot, Olasz Rizling, Pinot Noir, Rajnai Rizling, Rizlingszilváni, Zweigelt, Zöld Veltelíni
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
3,300
Vines per hectare, minimum
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 17.2 °C, warm on Gregory Jones's scale, with 1,548 growing degree days (Winkler II).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 195 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 17.2 °C
- Warm · 17–19 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 1,548
- Region II: 1,389–1,666 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 508 mm
- Of 768 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 142 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 157 m; Vineyard point 2, 248 m; Vineyard point 3, 179 m; Vineyard point 4, 220 m; Vineyard point 5, 169 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. GaillacVery similarCompared with Balaton: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. Gaillac premières côtesVery similarCompared with Balaton: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. ХисаряVery similarCompared with Balaton: 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, 142 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)
- 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
- 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 (1)
- Generated from EU reference data: check against the current product specification.