What is made here
Wine colours
Colours the rules allow. Pick a colour to filter the rules and grapes below.
Where it is
Biferno in Italy
- Latitude
- 41.4°–42.1° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 16 m to 583 m
- Production zone
- 159,155 ha
Lies within
Tintilia del Molise, Molise
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 Biferno must meet.
Blend rules
Biferno Rosso
- 70–80% Montepulciano · Main grape
- 10–20% Aglianico · Allowed
- ≤ 20% other non-aromatic black grapes authorised in Molise · Others allowed
Blend rules
Biferno Rosso Superiore
- 70–80% Montepulciano · Main grape
- 10–20% Aglianico · Allowed
- ≤ 20% other non-aromatic black grapes authorised in Molise · Others allowed
Blend rules
Biferno Rosato
- 70–80% Montepulciano · Main grape
- 10–20% Aglianico · Allowed
- ≤ 20% other non-aromatic black grapes authorised in Molise · Others allowed
Blend rules
Biferno Rosso Riserva
- 70–80% Montepulciano · Main grape
- 10–20% Aglianico · Allowed
- ≤ 20% other non-aromatic black grapes authorised in Molise · Others allowed
At least 36 months' ageing.
Blend rules
Biferno Bianco
- 70–80% Trebbiano Toscano · Main grape
- 20–30% other white grapes authorised in Molise · Others allowed
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
14 varieties · 4 wines
Barbera, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Ciliegiolo, Merlot, Moscato Nero di Acqui, Negro Amaro, Petit Verdot, Pinot Noir, Primitivo, Sagrantino, Sangiovese, Syrah, Tintilia
16 varieties · Biferno Bianco
Bombino Bianco, Falanghina, Fiano, Garganega, Greco, Malvasia Bianca di Candia, Malvasia di Candia Aromatica, Moscato Giallo, Muscat Blanc A Petits Grains, Pinot Blanc, Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Trebbiano Modenese, Trebbiano Romagnolo, Verdicchio Bianco, Welschriesling
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
600 m
Highest vineyard allowed
Cellar
Where the wine must be made
Within the production zone
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 19.4 °C, hot on Gregory Jones's scale, with 2,018 growing degree days (Winkler IV).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 251 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 19.4 °C
- Hot · 19–21 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 2,018
- Region IV: 1,944–2,221 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 368 mm
- Of 739 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 129 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 149 m; Vineyard point 2, 705 m; Vineyard point 3, 8 m; Vineyard point 4, 8 m; Vineyard point 5, 385 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. OrtonaVery similarCompared with Biferno: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. BiscoitosVery similarCompared with Biferno: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. ЛомVery similarCompared with Biferno: 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, 129 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: Biferno · 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: Maximum altitude is 500 m for the red and rosato types and 600 m for Bianco (the 600 m figure is recorded); hill vineyards only. The in-zone winemaking requirement is stated for Rosso riserva, and the whole province of Campobasso is also allowed.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.