What is made here
Wine colours
The only colour the rules allow.
Where it is
Orvieto in Italy
- Latitude
- 42.5°–42.9° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 136 m to 439 m
- Production zone
- 97,188 ha
Contains 1 appellation (outlined on the zone map)
Lago di Corbara
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 Orvieto must meet.
Blend rules
Orvieto
- ≥ 60% Trebbiano Toscano (Procanico) / Grechetto · Main grape
- ≤ 40% other white grapes authorised in Umbria and Viterbo province · Others allowed
Blend rules
Orvieto Secco
- ≥ 60% Trebbiano Toscano (Procanico) / Grechetto · Main grape
- ≤ 40% other white grapes authorised in Umbria and Viterbo province · Others allowed
Blend rules
Orvieto Abboccato
- ≥ 60% Trebbiano Toscano (Procanico) / Grechetto · Main grape
- ≤ 40% other white grapes authorised in Umbria and Viterbo province · Others allowed
Blend rules
Orvieto Dolce
- ≥ 60% Trebbiano Toscano (Procanico) / Grechetto · Main grape
- ≤ 40% other white grapes authorised in Umbria and Viterbo province · Others allowed
Blend rules
Orvieto Amabile
- ≥ 60% Trebbiano Toscano (Procanico) / Grechetto · Main grape
- ≤ 40% other white grapes authorised in Umbria and Viterbo province · Others allowed
Blend rules
Orvieto Superiore
- ≥ 60% Trebbiano Toscano (Procanico) / Grechetto · Main grape
- ≤ 40% other white grapes authorised in Umbria and Viterbo province · Others allowed
; release from after 1 March of the year after the harvest.
Blend rules
Orvieto Superiore Vendemmia Tardiva
- ≥ 60% Trebbiano Toscano (Procanico) / Grechetto · Main grape
- ≤ 40% other white grapes authorised in Umbria and Viterbo province · Others allowed
Blend rules
Orvieto Muffa Nobile
- ≥ 60% Trebbiano Toscano (Procanico) / Grechetto · Main grape
- ≤ 40% other white grapes authorised in Umbria and Viterbo province · Others allowed
Blend rules
Orvieto Classico
- ≥ 60% Trebbiano Toscano (Procanico) / Grechetto · Main grape
- ≤ 40% other white grapes authorised in Umbria and Viterbo province · Others allowed
Blend rules
Orvieto Classico Secco
- ≥ 60% Trebbiano Toscano (Procanico) / Grechetto · Main grape
- ≤ 40% other white grapes authorised in Umbria and Viterbo province · Others allowed
Blend rules
Orvieto Classico Dolce
- ≥ 60% Trebbiano Toscano (Procanico) / Grechetto · Main grape
- ≤ 40% other white grapes authorised in Umbria and Viterbo province · Others allowed
Blend rules
Orvieto Classico Abboccato
- ≥ 60% Trebbiano Toscano (Procanico) / Grechetto · Main grape
- ≤ 40% other white grapes authorised in Umbria and Viterbo province · Others allowed
Blend rules
Orvieto Classico Amabile
- ≥ 60% Trebbiano Toscano (Procanico) / Grechetto · Main grape
- ≤ 40% other white grapes authorised in Umbria and Viterbo province · Others allowed
Blend rules
Orvieto Classico Superiore
- ≥ 60% Trebbiano Toscano (Procanico) / Grechetto · Main grape
- ≤ 40% other white grapes authorised in Umbria and Viterbo province · Others allowed
; release from after 1 March of the year after the harvest.
Blend rules
Orvieto Classico Superiore Vendemmia Tardiva
- ≥ 60% Trebbiano Toscano (Procanico) / Grechetto · Main grape
- ≤ 40% other white grapes authorised in Umbria and Viterbo province · Others allowed
Blend rules
Orvieto Classico Muffa Nobile
- ≥ 60% Trebbiano Toscano (Procanico) / Grechetto · Main grape
- ≤ 40% other white grapes authorised in Umbria and Viterbo province · Others allowed
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
43 varieties · 16 wines
Albana, Bellone, Biancame, Bombino Bianco, Canaiolo Bianco, Capolongo, Falanghina, Fiano, Friulano, Garganega, Greco, Greco Bianco, Incrocio Bruni 54, Maceratino, Malvasia Bianca Lunga, Malvasia Bianca di Candia, Malvasia del Lazio, Manzoni Bianco, Maturano, Montonico Bianco, Moscato Giallo, Moscato di Terracina, Mostosa, Muller Thurgau, Muscat Blanc A Petits Grains, Pampanaro, Passerina, Pecorino, Petit Manseng, Pinot Blanc, Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon, Sylvaner, Trebbiano Giallo, Trebbiano Spoletino, Trebbiano di Soave, Verdello, Verdicchio Bianco, Vermentino, Vernaccia di S. Giminiano, Viognier, Welschriesling
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
3,000
Vines per hectare, minimum
100–500 m
Vineyard altitude allowed
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 18.4 °C, warm on Gregory Jones's scale, with 1,801 growing degree days (Winkler III).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 358 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 18.4 °C
- Warm · 17–19 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 1,801
- Region III: 1,667–1,943 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 515 mm
- Of 940 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 209 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 172 m; Vineyard point 2, 501 m; Vineyard point 3, 172 m; Vineyard point 4, 460 m; Vineyard point 5, 485 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. Côtes du RhôneVery similarCompared with Orvieto: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. Colli Romagna centraleVery similarCompared with Orvieto: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. Oltrepò PaveseVery similarCompared with Orvieto: 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, 209 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: Orvieto (version published by MASAF up to May 2023, via the Internet Archive; later amendments not yet included) · 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: Vineyards must lie between 100 and 500 m. Superiore needs 11.00% vol natural alcohol in Art. 4 but Art. 5 says 11.50% vol; the Art. 4 figure is recorded. Vendemmia tardiva is only for superiore wines, from partly dried grapes picked from 1 October; muffa nobile is from noble-rot grapes. Orvieto Classico must be vinified in the Classico zone and the communes partly within it; plain Orvieto and Classico types are dry to sweet, so sweetness is null for them.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.