What is made here
Wine colours
The only colour the rules allow.
Where it is
Vernaccia di San Gimignano in Italy
- Latitude
- 43.4°–43.5° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 80 m to 282 m
- Production zone
- 13,862 ha
Lies within
Chianti, Vin Santo del Chianti, Colli dell'Etruria Centrale
Covers the same area as
San Gimignano
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 Vernaccia di San Gimignano must meet.
Blend rules
Vernaccia di San Gimignano
- – Vernaccia di San Gimignano · Main grape
- ≤ 10% Sauvignon / Riesling · Allowed
- ≤ 15% other non-aromatic white grapes suitable in Toscana · Others allowed
Blend rules
Vernaccia di San Gimignano Riserva
- – Vernaccia di San Gimignano · Main grape
- ≤ 10% Sauvignon / Riesling · Allowed
- ≤ 15% other non-aromatic white grapes suitable in Toscana · Others allowed
At least 11 months' ageing.
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
29 varieties · Vernaccia di San Gimignano, Vernaccia di San Gimignano Riserva
Albana, Albarola, Ansonica, Biancone, Canaiolo Bianco, Clairette, Durella, Fiano, Grechetto, Greco, Livornese Bianca, Malvasia Bianca Lunga, Manzoni Bianco, Marsanne, Nocchianello Bianco, Orpicchio, Petit Manseng, Pinot Blanc, Riesling, Roussanne, Sauvignon Blanc, Semillon, Trebbiano Toscano, Verdea, Verdello, Verdicchio Bianco, Vermentino, Viognier, Welschriesling
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
4,000
Vines per hectare, minimum
500 m
Highest vineyard allowed
No forcing
Forcing the vines is prohibited
Permitted
Irrigation
Cellar
Where the wine must be made
Within the production zone
Allowed
Enrichment (chaptalisation)
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 18.4 °C, warm on Gregory Jones's scale, with 1,808 growing degree days (Winkler III).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 231 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 18.4 °C
- Warm · 17–19 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 1,808
- Region III: 1,667–1,943 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 535 mm
- Of 971 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 231 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 169 m; Vineyard point 2, 196 m; Vineyard point 3, 442 m; Vineyard point 4, 189 m; Vineyard point 5, 159 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. Fiano di AvellinoVery similarCompared with Vernaccia di San Gimignano: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. Oltrepò PaveseVery similarCompared with Vernaccia di San Gimignano: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. OrvietoVery similarCompared with Vernaccia di San Gimignano: 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, 231 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: Vernaccia di San Gimignano (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: DOCG. New plantings need at least four thousand (quattromila) vines per hectare. Yield is also capped at 3.0 kg per vine (4.0 or 5.0 kg for older plantings); tendone training is prohibited; Traminer, Moscato bianco, Müller Thurgau, Malvasia di Candia, Malvasia Istriana and Incrocio Bruni 54 are excluded. Bottling must take place in the vinification area; only rectified concentrated must may be used for enrichment.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.