What is made here
Wine colours
Colours the rules allow. Pick a colour to filter the rules and grapes below.
Where it is
Palmela in Portugal
- Latitude
- 38.4°–38.8° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 20 m to 90 m
- Production zone
- 115,432 ha
Covers the same area as
Setúbal
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 Palmela must meet.
Blend rules
Palmela tinto
- ≥ 66.7% Castelão · Main grape
- – varieties listed in the specification (16 white, 15 red) · Others allowed
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
30 varieties · Palmela frisante, Palmela espumante, Palmela licoroso
Alicante Bouschet, Alvarinho, Antão Vaz, Arinto, Bastardo, Cabernet Sauvignon, Castelão, Chardonnay, Fernão Pires, Loureiro, Malvasia Fina, Merlot, Moscatel Galego Branco, Moscatel Galego Roxo, Moscatel Graúdo, Petit Verdot, Pinot Blanc, Rabo de Ovelha, Roupeiro Branco, Sauvignon Blanc, Syrah, Tannat, Tempranillo, Tinta Miúda, Tinto Cao, Touriga Franca, Touriga Nacional, Trincadeira, Verdelho, Viosinho
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 19.6 °C, hot on Gregory Jones's scale, with 2,059 growing degree days (Winkler IV).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 63 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 19.6 °C
- Hot · 19–21 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 2,059
- Region IV: 1,944–2,221 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 224 mm
- Of 544 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 106 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 30 m; Vineyard point 2, 65 m; Vineyard point 3, 34 m; Vineyard point 4, 111 m; Vineyard point 5, 74 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. Ribera del JúcarVery similarCompared with Palmela: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. GranadaVery similarCompared with Palmela: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. Chozas CarrascalVery similarCompared with Palmela: same season warmth, wetter (+37 mm).
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, 106 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: Palmela (Caderno de especificações da DO Palmela-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: Rosé may include white grapes up to one third of the total and is made by 'bica aberta' (free-run, no skin contact). Frisante and espumante get their CO2 from a second fermentation (method not specified). Red frisante and espumante need 18 g/l non-reducing extract (16 g/l shown for white/rosé). Licoroso: 16-22 % vol actual, fortified with neutral wine alcohol of at least 96 % vol or wine distillate of 52-86 % vol; its table gives total alcohol of at most 17.5 % vol, which conflicts with the 22 % vol actual maximum, so it is left out. Vinification in the region may be waived in exceptional cases by the certifying body. Escolha, Superior, Reserva, Colheita Seleccionada and Garrafeira may be used under general national legislation (no specific limits given). The former 12-month minimum ageing for red was revoked in 2000.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.