What is made here
Wine colours
Colours the rules allow. Pick a colour to filter the rules and grapes below.
Where it is
Bela krajina in Slovenia
- Latitude
- 45.4°–45.7° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 209 m to 403 m
- Production zone
- 59,129 ha
Covers the same area as
Belokranjec, Cviček, Metliška črnina
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 Bela krajina must meet.
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
22 varieties · Bela krajina kakovostno peneče vino ZGP (penina), Bela krajina vrhunsko peneče vino ZGP (penina)
Bela Zlahtnina, Beli Pinot, Chardonnay, Dišeci Traminec, Gamay, Kerner, Kraljevina, Laški Rizling, Modra Frankinja, Modri Pinot, Portugalka, Radgonska Ranina, Rdeca Zlahtnina, Renski Rizling, Rumeni Muškat, Sauvignon Blanc, Sivi Pinot, Traminec, Zametovka, Zeleni Silvanec, Zweigelt, Šentlovrenka
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 16.5 °C, intermediate on Gregory Jones's scale, with 1,411 growing degree days (Winkler II).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 245 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 16.5 °C
- Intermediate · 15–17 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 1,411
- Region II: 1,389–1,666 degree days
- Growing-season rain
- 767 mm
- Of 1,230 mm a year
- Harvest rain
- 234 mm
- September–October
Copernicus ERA5-Land monthly averages at 5 vineyard points (Vineyard point 1, 153 m; Vineyard point 2, 184 m; Vineyard point 3, 197 m; Vineyard point 4, 263 m; Vineyard point 5, 428 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. Roussette du BugeyVery similarCompared with Bela krajina: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. ChénasVery similarCompared with Bela krajina: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. Moulin-à-VentVery similarCompared with Bela krajina: 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
- 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: Bela krajina (SPECIFIKACIJA PROIZVODA- Bela krajina.doc) · 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: Permitted varieties (section 6) begin with Laški rizling, Beli pinot, Sauvignon, Sivi pinot and Chardonnay (14 white, 8 red including Modra frankinja, Žametovka and Portugalka). Products follow the traditional terms (quality wine, quality sparkling wine, top-quality wine with its late-harvest, selection, berry selection, dry berry selection, ice wine, archive wine and straw wine mentions, top-quality sparkling wine); colours are not separated. The yield limit is 8,000 litres of wine per hectare. Sugar-free extract must be at least 17 g/l for white and rosé and 20 g/l for red wines; glycerol at least 5 g/l; ash at least 1.2 (white), 1.4 (rosé) and 1.6 g/l (red). Top-quality wine (vrhunsko vino) may not be enriched, sweetened, acidified or deacidified; straw wine has no own must weight, so the 84 °Oe of vrhunsko vino is recorded. Sparkling cuvées need at least 9 % vol (quality) or 9.5 % vol (top-quality) total alcohol; the method is not fixed. Wines need an organoleptic score of at least 16.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.