What is made here
Wine colours
Colours the rules allow. Pick a colour to filter the rules and grapes below.
Where it is
Pornassio in Italy
- Latitude
- 43.9°–44.1° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 440 m to 583 m
- Production zone
- 32,089 ha
Lies within
Riviera ligure di Ponente
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 Pornassio must meet.
Blend rules
Pornassio od Ormeasco di Pornassio
- ≥ 95% Ormeasco / Dolcetto · Main grape
- ≤ 5% other non-aromatic grapes of the same colour suitable for Liguria · Others allowed
; release from 1 March of the year after the harvest.
Blend rules
Pornassio od Ormeasco di Pornassio Sciac-Trà
- ≥ 95% Ormeasco / Dolcetto · Main grape
- ≤ 5% other non-aromatic grapes of the same colour suitable for Liguria · Others allowed
; release from 1 March of the year after the harvest.
Blend rules
Pornassio od Ormeasco di Pornassio Superiore
- ≥ 95% Ormeasco / Dolcetto · Main grape
- ≤ 5% other non-aromatic grapes of the same colour suitable for Liguria · Others allowed
; release from 1 November of the year after the harvest.
Blend rules
Pornassio od Ormeasco di Pornassio Passito
- ≥ 95% Ormeasco / Dolcetto · Main grape
- ≤ 5% other non-aromatic grapes of the same colour suitable for Liguria · Others allowed
At least 12 months' ageing.
Blend rules
Pornassio od Ormeasco di Pornassio Passito Liquoroso
- ≥ 95% Ormeasco / Dolcetto · Main grape
- ≤ 5% other non-aromatic grapes of the same colour suitable for Liguria · Others allowed
At least 12 months' ageing.
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
14 varieties · 5 wines
Albarossa, Alicante, Barbera, Barsaglina, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Canaiolo Nero, Ciliegiolo, Merlot, Pollera Nera, Rossese, Sangiovese, Syrah, Vermentino Nero
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
4,500
Vines per hectare, minimum
Training
Systems allowed
spalliera semplice; pergola a tetto orizzontale
No forcing
Forcing the vines is prohibited
Emergency only
Irrigation
Cellar
Where the wine must be made
Within the production zone
Allowed
Enrichment (chaptalisation)
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 17.5 °C, warm on Gregory Jones's scale, with 1,609 growing degree days (Winkler II).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 543 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 17.5 °C
- Warm · 17–19 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 1,609
- Region II: 1,389–1,666 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 718 mm
- Of 1,209 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 234 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 458 m; Vineyard point 2, 579 m; Vineyard point 3, 552 m; Vineyard point 4, 532 m; Vineyard point 5, 592 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 complex terrain (height corrections up to 4.1 °C); absolute values may be several degrees out, year-to-year changes are more reliable.
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. CurtefrancaVery similarCompared with Pornassio: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. BotticinoVery similarCompared with Pornassio: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. Rubino di CantavennaVery similarCompared with Pornassio: 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, 234 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: Pornassio (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: Art. 2 grape rules are stated for the red and Sciac-trà wines; the Passito types must also come from Ormeasco or Dolcetto grapes, dried to at least 260 g/l sugar. Bottling must take place within the Riviera Ligure di Ponente zone; the natural alcohol minimum for Passito types applies after drying.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.