What is made here
Wine colours
The only colour the rules allow.
Where it is
Barbaresco in Italy
- Latitude
- 44.6°–44.8° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 189 m to 386 m
- Production zone
- 9,231 ha
Lies within
Dolcetto d'Alba, Asti, Barbera d'Alba, Alba, Langhe, Piemonte
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.
01 · What the law says
The rules
Limits on grapes, yields, ripeness and ageing that every wine labelled Barbaresco must meet.
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
3,500
Vines per hectare, minimum
550 m
Highest vineyard allowed
Training
Systems allowed
controspalliera (Guyot)
No forcing
Forcing the vines is prohibited
Prohibited
Irrigation
Cellar
Where the wine must be made
Within the production zone
Allowed
Enrichment (chaptalisation)
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 17.8 °C, warm on Gregory Jones's scale, with 1,667 growing degree days (Winkler II).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 308 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 17.8 °C
- Warm · 17–19 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 1,667
- Region II: 1,389–1,666 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 596 mm
- Of 998 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 203 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 249 m; Vineyard point 2, 241 m; Vineyard point 3, 287 m; Vineyard point 4, 258 m; Vineyard point 5, 505 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.
Lower confidence:Monthly reanalysis in moderately complex terrain; not yet checked against a weather station.
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. Cortese dell'Alto MonferratoVery similarCompared with Barbaresco: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. MonferratoVery similarCompared with Barbaresco: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. Côtes du VivaraisVery similarCompared with Barbaresco: 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, 203 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
- Disciplinare di produzione: Barbaresco · Ministero dell'agricoltura, della sovranità alimentare e delle foreste (MASAF) · 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 lower yield of 7.2 t/ha (min. natural alcohol 12.50%) applies only with a geographical mention plus 'vigna'; young vineyards (3rd-6th year) have reduced yields. After ageing the grape-to-wine yield falls to 68% (54.4 hl/ha). Vinification may also take place in the comune of Alba by ministerial permission.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.