Dolcetto di Ovada Superiore

What is made here

Wine colours

The only colour the rules allow.

Where it is

Dolcetto di Ovada Superiore in Italy

Latitude: 44.5°–44.8° N
Vineyard altitude: 193 m to 334 m
Production zone: 38,440 ha

Lies within
Alta Langa, Monferrato, Piemonte

Covers the same area as
Dolcetto di Ovada

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 Dolcetto di Ovada Superiore must meet.

4 wines in the rules.
Wine	Main grape(s)	Max yield t/ha	With named unit t/ha	Max wine hl/ha	Wine from grapes max. %	Grape ripeness min. % pot. alc.	Wine min. % alc.	Acidity min. g/l	Dry extract min. g/l	Ageing min. months
Dolcetto di Ovada Superiore/Ovada	100% Dolcetto	7	6	49	70	12	12.5	4.5	23	12
Dolcetto di Ovada Superiore/Ovada Riserva	100% Dolcetto	7	6	49	70	12	12.5	4.5	23	24
Dolcetto di Ovada Superiore/Ovada (con Menzione Vigna)	100% Dolcetto	6	6	42	70	12.5	13	4.5	24	20
Dolcetto di Ovada Superiore/Ovada Riserva (con Menzione Vigna)	100% Dolcetto	6	6	42	70	12.5	13	4.5	24	24

From the official production rules (disciplinare di produzione). Hover a figure to see the clause it comes from. A dash means the rules set no figure, or it is not captured yet.

In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine

4,000

Vines per hectare, minimum

600 m

Highest vineyard allowed

Training

Systems allowed

controspalliera (Guyot tradizionale)

No forcing

Forcing the vines is prohibited

Cellar

Where the wine must be made

Within the production zone

Allowed

Enrichment (chaptalisation)

02 · Climate fingerprint

The climate

The growing season averages 18.1 °C, warm on Gregory Jones's scale, with 1,731 growing degree days (Winkler III).

The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 243 m

Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season

Growing-season temperature: 18.1 °C; Warm · 17–19 °C (Jones)
Growing degree days: 1,731; Region III: 1,667–1,943 degree days
Growing-season rain: 544 mm; Of 980 mm a year
Harvest rain: 221 mm; September–October

Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 218 m; Vineyard point 2, 222 m; Vineyard point 3, 185 m; Vineyard point 4, 326 m; Vineyard point 5, 263 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. Colli TortonesiVery similarCompared with Dolcetto di Ovada Superiore: same season warmth, similar rain.

2. Pinot nero dell'Oltrepò PaveseVery similarCompared with Dolcetto di Ovada Superiore: same season warmth, similar rain.

3. RoeroVery similarCompared with Dolcetto di Ovada Superiore: same season warmth, similar rain.

Growing-season temperature

Dolcetto di Ovada Superiore

18.1 °C

Colli Tortonesi

18.1 °C

Pinot nero dell'Oltrepò Pavese

18.1 °C

Roero

18.1 °C

Growing degree days

Dolcetto di Ovada Superiore

1,731

Colli Tortonesi

1,736

Pinot nero dell'Oltrepò Pavese

1,724

Roero

1,743

Growing-season rain

Dolcetto di Ovada Superiore

544 mm

Colli Tortonesi

540 mm

Pinot nero dell'Oltrepò Pavese

541 mm

Roero

549 mm

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, 221 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: Dolcetto di Ovada Superiore · 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 riserva rule (at least 24 months' ageing) is in Art. 8, with no start date stated. Vigna wines need vines at least 7 years old, with reduced yields for younger vines.
National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.