What is made here
Wine colours
Colours the rules allow. Pick a colour to filter the rules and grapes below.
Where it is
Zala in Hungary
- Latitude
- 46.4°–47.0° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 159 m to 246 m
- Production zone
- 92,526 ha
Lies within
Balaton
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 Zala must meet.
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
15 varieties · 14 wines
Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Cserszegi Füszeres, Furmint, Hárslevelü, Kadarka, Kékfrankos, Merlot, Olasz Rizling, Pinot Noir, Rajnai Rizling, Rizlingszilváni, Zweigelt, Zöld Veltelíni
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
2,381
Vines per hectare, minimum
Training
Systems allowed
Moser (modified Moser); umbrella; Sylvoz; medium-high and high cordon; Guyot; gobelet
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 17.0 °C, warm on Gregory Jones's scale, with 1,504 growing degree days (Winkler II).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 212 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 17.0 °C
- Warm · 17–19 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 1,504
- Region II: 1,389–1,666 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 518 mm
- Of 777 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 147 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 246 m; Vineyard point 2, 209 m; Vineyard point 3, 200 m; Vineyard point 4, 169 m; Vineyard point 5, 236 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. Crémant de LimouxVery similarCompared with Zala: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. SomlóiVery similarCompared with Zala: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. ΖίτσαVery similarCompared with Zala: 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, 147 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
- Single document: Zala (Official Journal C 319, 23.8.2022; and the technical file 'Ares(2014)2154724' from the EU register) · European Union, Official Journal (C series) · EU law (Commission reuse policy)
- 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: Main varieties (section 7): 44, including blauburger, cabernet franc, cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, cserszegi fűszeres, csókaszőlő, furmint, hárslevelű. Machine-harvested grapes are limited to 13,500 kg/ha; ice, select-harvest, late-harvest and quality sparkling wines must be hand-harvested. Grape minimums are higher for late-harvest (15 % vol), select-harvest (13 % vol; rosé 12.08 %) and ice wine (16.66 % vol), which have no separate description in section 4. Vine density is at most 7,000 vines/ha. Products added from the national technical file's grape-quality rules: késői szüretelésű (late-harvest, white or red), válogatott szüretelésű (select-harvest; white and red need 13 % vol / 22.2 °MM, rosé 12.08 % vol / 19 °MM, recorded as the lowest) and jégbor (ice wine, white only); grape rules are copied from the white wine, as the file gives none of their own.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.