What is made here
Wine colours
The only colour the rules allow.
Where it is
Franciacorta in Italy
- Latitude
- 45.5°–45.7° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 140 m to 342 m
- Production zone
- 35,493 ha
Contains 1 appellation (outlined on the zone map)
Curtefranca
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 Franciacorta must meet.
Blend rules
Franciacorta
- – Chardonnay / Pinot nero · Main grape
- ≤ 50% Pinot Blanc · Allowed
- ≤ 10% Erbamat · Allowed
Blend rules
Franciacorta Millesimato
- – Chardonnay / Pinot nero · Main grape
- ≤ 50% Pinot Blanc · Allowed
- ≤ 10% Erbamat · Allowed
Blend rules
Franciacorta Riserva
- – Chardonnay / Pinot nero · Main grape
- ≤ 50% Pinot Blanc · Allowed
- ≤ 10% Erbamat · Allowed
Blend rules
Franciacorta Satèn
- ≥ 50% Chardonnay · Main grape
- ≤ 50% Pinot Blanc · Allowed
Blend rules
Franciacorta Satèn Millesimato
- ≥ 50% Chardonnay · Main grape
- ≤ 50% Pinot Blanc · Allowed
Blend rules
Franciacorta Satèn Riserva
- ≥ 50% Chardonnay · Main grape
- ≤ 50% Pinot Blanc · Allowed
Blend rules
Franciacorta Rosé
- ≤ 65% Chardonnay · Main grape
- ≥ 35% Pinot Noir · Main grape
- ≤ 50% Pinot Blanc · Allowed
- ≤ 10% Erbamat · Allowed
Blend rules
Franciacorta Rosé Millesimato
- ≤ 65% Chardonnay · Main grape
- ≥ 35% Pinot Noir · Main grape
- ≤ 50% Pinot Blanc · Allowed
- ≤ 10% Erbamat · Allowed
Blend rules
Franciacorta Rosé Riserva
- ≤ 65% Chardonnay · Main grape
- ≥ 35% Pinot Noir · Main grape
- ≤ 50% Pinot Blanc · Allowed
- ≤ 10% Erbamat · Allowed
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
4,500
Vines per hectare, minimum
Training
Systems allowed
spalliera singola (tralcio rinnovato o cordone speronato)
Permitted
Irrigation
Cellar
Where the wine must be made
Within the production zone
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 17.7 °C, warm on Gregory Jones's scale, with 1,657 growing degree days (Winkler II).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 183 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 17.7 °C
- Warm · 17–19 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 1,657
- Region II: 1,389–1,666 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 766 mm
- Of 1,155 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 240 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 173 m; Vineyard point 2, 139 m; Vineyard point 3, 206 m; Vineyard point 4, 205 m; Vineyard point 5, 191 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. Rubino di CantavennaVery similarCompared with Franciacorta: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. SoaveVery similarCompared with Franciacorta: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. PortofinoVery similarCompared with Franciacorta: 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, 240 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: Franciacorta · 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: Erbamat needs only 9% vol natural alcohol and 2,500 vines/ha; grapes must be hand-picked and whole-bunch pressed. Tiraggio may start from 1 February after the youngest base-wine vintage; millesimato and riserva need at least 85% wine of the vintage, and Satèn is brut only with at most 20 g/l sugar for the prise de mousse and 5 atm pressure. Several dosage styles are allowed for the other types, so sweetness is left null.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.