What is made here
Wine colours
The only colour the rules allow.
Where it is
Marsala in Italy
- Latitude
- 37.6°–38.2° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 4 m to 344 m
- Production zone
- 221,139 ha
Lies within
Sicilia
Contains 3 appellations (outlined on the zone map)
Delia Nivolelli, Erice, Salaparuta
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 Marsala must meet.
Blend rules
Marsala Fine Rubino
- – Perricone (Pignatello) / Calabrese (Nero d'Avola) / Nerello mascalese · Main grape
- ≤ 30% white grapes listed for oro and ambra · Allowed
At least 12 months' ageing.
Blend rules
Marsala Superiore Rubino
- – Perricone (Pignatello) / Calabrese (Nero d'Avola) / Nerello mascalese · Main grape
- ≤ 30% white grapes listed for oro and ambra · Allowed
At least 24 months' ageing.
Blend rules
Marsala Superiore Riserva Rubino
- – Perricone (Pignatello) / Calabrese (Nero d'Avola) / Nerello mascalese · Main grape
- ≤ 30% white grapes listed for oro and ambra · Allowed
At least 48 months' ageing.
Blend rules
Marsala Vergine/Soleras Rubino
- – Perricone (Pignatello) / Calabrese (Nero d'Avola) / Nerello mascalese · Main grape
- ≤ 30% white grapes listed for oro and ambra · Allowed
At least 60 months' ageing.
Blend rules
Marsala Vergine Riserva Rubino
- – Perricone (Pignatello) / Calabrese (Nero d'Avola) / Nerello mascalese · Main grape
- ≤ 30% white grapes listed for oro and ambra · Allowed
At least 120 months' ageing.
Blend rules
Marsala Soleras Stravecchio Rubino
- – Perricone (Pignatello) / Calabrese (Nero d'Avola) / Nerello mascalese · Main grape
- ≤ 30% white grapes listed for oro and ambra · Allowed
At least 120 months' ageing.
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
5 varieties · 6 wines
Ansonica, Catarratto Bianco Comune, Catarratto Bianco Lucido, Damaschino, Grillo
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
Training
Systems allowed
vertical systems including alberello and spalliera
No forcing
Forcing the vines is prohibited
Permitted
Irrigation
Cellar
Where the wine must be made
Within the production zone
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 21.2 °C, very hot on Gregory Jones's scale, with 2,401 growing degree days (Winkler V).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 179 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 21.2 °C
- Very hot · above 21 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 2,401
- Region V: 2,222 and over degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 232 mm
- Of 581 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 127 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 144 m; Vineyard point 2, 272 m; Vineyard point 3, 471 m; Vineyard point 4, 2 m; Vineyard point 5, 4 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. Pla i LlevantVery similarCompared with Marsala: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. Orta NovaVery similarCompared with Marsala: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. MenfiVery similarCompared with Marsala: 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, 127 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: Marsala · 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: Fortified wine: all ageing must be in wood except the first four months of Marsala Fine; sweetness may be secco (<40 g/l), semisecco (40-100 g/l) or dolce (>100 g/l), so it is left null. Vergine must have natural sugar below 4% and may not use cooked must, concentrate or sifone; Fine and Superiore ambra need at least 1% cooked must. Grape-to-must yield is at most 80%.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.