What is made here
Wine colours
The only colour the rules allow.
Where it is
Madeira in Portugal
- Latitude
- 30.0°–33.1° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 14 m to 389 m
- Production zone
- 80,110 ha
Covers the same area as
Madeirense
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 Madeira must meet.
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
19 varieties · 4 wines
Bastardo, Caracol, Complexa, Deliciosa, Folgasão, Listrão, Malvasia Cândida, Malvasia Cândida Roxa, Malvasia Fina, Malvasia de São Jorge, Moscatel Graúdo, Rio Grande, Sercial, Tinta, Tinta Negra, Triunfo, Valveirinho, Verdelho, Verdelho Tinto
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
Cellar
Where the wine must be made
Within the production zone
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 20.9 °C, hot on Gregory Jones's scale, with 2,343 growing degree days (Winkler V).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 49 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 20.9 °C
- Hot · 19–21 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 2,343
- Region V: 2,222 and over degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 210 mm
- Of 525 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 100 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 152 m; Vineyard point 2, 9 m; Vineyard point 3, 26 m; Vineyard point 4, 21 m; Vineyard point 5, 39 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 3.9 °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. Sambuca di SiciliaVery similarCompared with Madeira: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. Cerasuolo di VittoriaVery similarCompared with Madeira: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. AlicanteVery similarCompared with Madeira: 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, 100 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
- 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
- Product specification: Madeira (Caderno Especificações DOP Madeira- 16-03-2012 IVBAM Final.pdf) · National authority, as filed in the EU register (eAmbrosia) · Official document
- 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: Madeira is a liqueur wine fortified with neutral grape spirit of at least 96 % vol; rectified or ordinary concentrated must from the region may add up to 8 % vol. Acquired alcohol must be 17-22 % vol (15.5 % vol exceptionally for export with IVBAM authorisation) and total alcohol 17.5 % vol. Sweetness is defined in degrees Baumé (extra-dry up to 0.5; seco/Sercial below 1.5; meio-seco/Verdelho and Rainwater 1-2.5; meio-doce/Boal 2.5-3.5; doce/Malvasia above 3.5), not g/l. Canteiro wine is aged at least 2 years in wood and cannot be bottled before 3 years; estufagem heats wine at no more than 50 °C for at least 90 days. Age indications run 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 and over 40 years; Seleccionado/Finest needs 3 years' ageing. Recommended varieties include Bastardo, Folgasão (Terrantez), Malvasia Branca-de-São-Jorge, Malvasia-Cândida, Malvasia-Fina (Boal), Sercial, Tinta, Tinta-Negra, Verdelho and Verdelho-Tinto. Yield is 80 hl of must per hectare.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.