What is made here
Wine colours
The only colour the rules allow.
Where it is
Metliška črnina in Slovenia
- Latitude
- 45.4°–45.7° N
- Vineyard altitude
- 208 m to 399 m
- Production zone
- 59,129 ha
Covers the same area as
Bela krajina, Belokranjec, Cviček
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 Metliška črnina must meet.
Blend rules
Metliška črnina red
- ≤ 60% Modra Frankinja N · Main grape
- 20–40% Zametovka N · Main grape
- 5–20% Portugalka N / Šentlovrenka N / Gamay N / Modri Pinot N / Zweigelt N · Allowed
- ≤ 10% other authorised and recommended red varieties of the Bela Krajina region · Others allowed
; release from 30 November of the harvest year.
Other varieties allowed
Besides the main grapes, the rules allow these varieties in some wines. Grape names link where a profile exists.
7 varieties · Metliška črnina red
Gamay, Modra Frankinja, Modri Pinot, Portugalka, Zametovka, Zweigelt, Šentlovrenka
In the vineyard and cellar: rules for every wine
4,000
Vines per hectare, minimum
Training
Systems allowed
guyot and variants
Allowed
Enrichment (chaptalisation)
02 · Climate fingerprint
The climate
The growing season averages 16.4 °C, intermediate on Gregory Jones's scale, with 1,374 growing degree days (Winkler Ib).
The average year 1991–2020, vineyards at about 273 m
Monthly mean, °CRain, mmGrowing season
- Growing-season temperature
- 16.4 °C
- Intermediate · 15–17 °C (Jones)
- Growing degree days
- 1,374
- Region Ib: 1,111–1,388 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, 175 m; Vineyard point 3, 260 m; Vineyard point 4, 435 m; Vineyard point 5, 344 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. IrouléguyVery similarCompared with Metliška črnina: same season warmth, similar rain.
2. Saint-AmourVery similarCompared with Metliška črnina: same season warmth, similar rain.
3. BugeyVery similarCompared with Metliška črnina: 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
- Single document: Metliška črnina (Official Journal C, C/2026/3598, 13.7.2026; and the product specification 'SPECIFIKACIJA PROIZVODA- Metliška črnina.doc' from the EU register) · European Union, Official Journal (C series) · EU law (Commission reuse policy)
- 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: Maximum yields are set per variety: 11,000 kg/ha for Zametovka, Portugalka, Gamay and mixed varieties, 10,000 kg/ha for Modra Frankinja, Šentlovrenka, Modri Pinot and Zweigelt. Minimum grape sugar is set per variety (142.6-169.3 g/l). Grapes are destemmed and macerated; stopping fermentation, sweetening and potassium sorbate are not allowed; actual alcohol 10.5-12.5 %, total acidity 4.5-7.0 g/l. Vine density must exceed 3,100/ha on terraces steeper than 20 %. National specification (2013): minimum average grape sugar 142,6 g/l for Žametovka, 158,1 g/l Portugalka and Gamay, 163,7 g/l Modri pinot and Šentlovrenka, 169,3 g/l Modra frankinja and Zweigelt; organoleptic score at least 16,5. It gives actual alcohol 10,3–11,5 % vol, titratable acidity 5,5–7,0 g/l, Žametovka at least 30 % and other varieties 5–15 % together, which differ from the single document; existing values are kept.
- National tier (DOC/DOCG) not captured yet; rules extracted from the specification text.