Good wine is about a sense of place. Where a wine's grapes are grown - be it Napa, Chianti, Bordeaux, Mendoza - is inseparable from how it tastes. That's why wine maps are important to us.

Wine Maps of the World - The Essential Collection makes it easy to pinpoint a wine’s location with ease, accuracy, and style. It’s the result of over ten years of making wine maps at De Long. Put it in your tasting room, wine cellar, or any place you drink wine, and you’ll find yourself referring to it again and again.  Its unique format makes it more than just a reference but an enjoyable way to learn and share about a wine’s origins.

Wine Maps of the World - The Essential Collection

 

Obsessed with accuracy

We pride ourselves on accuracy, completeness, and legibility. Just as making fine wine requires exceptional grapes, first-rate maps require quality data. All of ours start from the source: the laws countries use to define their vinicultural zones. We translate those rules into detailed maps and verify them with satellite data and industry experts.

plotting Rogue Valley AVA and satellite construction of Maule Valley DO

 

Throughout the world our wine maps are used by professionals, sommeliers, educators, students and enthusiasts.

You won’t find more accurate wine maps anywhere. As you would expect from any decent cartographer: we sweat the small stuff!

Unfortunately, most other wine maps available don’t keep to the same standard. less rigorous, perfunctory copying has produced many poor maps, especially online. Their makers probably don’t mind if they’re inaccurate or wrong since most people wouldn’t know the difference. But we do and we care.

The Etna wine region. Left: a popular map on the web; Right: our map as per Italian wine law.

 

Smart and good looking

We’ve built a considerable database of wine regions worldwide that we use in our maps. But since we’ve sold them mainly as wall maps, they aren’t as useful as they could be.

framed wine maps of Austria & Hungary and South Africa

 

That’s why we’re putting this invaluable reference in a handy bookshelf format. The full set has 12 maps of the world’s main wine-producing countries and regions.

The maps are also available individually – each comes in a box with an index and handy map tack stickers for plotting regions that you’ve tasted or visited.

Many of our maps are not of a single country or state. It seems strange to keep Portugal blanked out on a map of Spain, or to slice off Chile from a map of Argentina. Wine doesn’t stop at the border! All of our maps show adjacent countries’ wine regions whenever possible.

detail of Portugal - Spain border

The boxed set of 12 maps actually gives you 54 maps when adding up the countries, states, provinces, and detailed maps.

 

All the maps in brief

Here’s a complete list of the maps, along with a brief description of the challenges presented by each map:

France is the most thoroughly mapped wine country in the world and has excellent cartographers. While they excel in detailed regional maps, they don’t devote the same effort to the overall map of the country, which has allowed us to sell a good deal of our maps, which are in English, in France.

Includes: all AOP (Appellation d’origine protegée, formerly known as Appellation d’origine contrôlée) and IGP (Indication géographique protégée, formerly known as Vin de Pays) regions; detail maps of Bordeaux, Beaujolais and the Côte-d'Or; adjacent regions in Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Luxembourg.

 

This was the first modern comprehensive and accurate map of Italy’s wine regions. That sounds almost unbelievable - I certainly couldn’t believe it hadn’t been done before at the time but quickly understood why. It was complicated to produce, as most of it was a translation of written Italian wine laws into maps. Luckily, it was well-received and became an impetus to carry on mapping the wine world.

Includes: all DOC (Denominazione di Origine Controllata), DOCG (Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita) and IGP (Indicazione Geografica Protetta) regions; detail maps of Piedmont DOCs, Piedmont DOCGs and Chianti subregions.

 

This was our very first map, when we really didn’t know what we were getting into. Luckily we had excellent help from Spanish and Portuguese wine experts Gabriella and Ryan Opaz to guide us. It has now been updated seven times since 2008.

Includes: all DOP (DOCa, DO, VP and VC) and IGP regions of Spain; All DOP and IGP regions of Portugal; detail maps of Priorat and Rioja; adjacent regions of France, Morocco and Algeria.

 

Before this map, every German wine map of the entire country showed overly generalized blobs of their major wine regions (Anbaugebiete). This vagueness was a complete disconnect from the incredibly detailed vineyard maps developed by the German wine authority, Deutsches Weininstitut. The challenge was to retain as much detail as possible on a single map of Germany while maintaining legibility or in cartographer’s terms, good generalization.

Includes: all main wine regions (Anbaugebiete) broken down in sub-regions (Berech) and including top wine villages and grape varieties; detail maps of Rheingau and Mosel; adjacent regions of France, Luxembourg, and Switzerland.

 

Austria is often grouped with Germany, but in reality, it’s at the heart of central Europe. It was an empire with Hungary after all! This map covers some of the most exciting, dynamic and delicious wine regions anywhere. The biggest challenge here was representing the regions in the six neighboring countries, each with a different language and set of wine laws.

Includes: all Austria and Hungary's top level (AOP) official wine regions as well as adjacent regions in Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia; detail maps of Wachau, Kremsal and Kamptal, and Tokaj.

 

This is the only wine map of Greece that shows all of its regions, PDO and PGI on one map. By far the most significant challenge here was going over the written Greek wine region specifications and mapping them. Luckily we had a superb translator! 

Includes: all PDO and PGI regions of Greece; detail maps of Santorini and Nemea; adjacent regions in Albania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria and Turkey.

 

The government agency that defines US wine regions or AVAs, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, provides detailed written descriptions of them that follow landmarks on USGS survey maps. Plotting the AVAs is fairly straightforward but time-consuming. We're currently working on a project with UC Davis to plot all US AVAs.

Includes: all 139 California American Viticultural Regions (AVAs); detail map of Napa and Sonoma.

 

I grew up in the Willamette Valley when the region became an AVA; it didn’t have many vineyards then, but it's now indeed wine country with several sub-regions that reflect its varied terroir. It's fun mapping where I once rode my bike!

Includes: all AVAs of Oregon and Washington; all Geographic Indications (GIs) as well as sub GIs of British Columbia; detail maps of Walla Walla Valley and the northern Willamette Valley; statistics on major grape varieties of Oregon, Washington and British Columbia.

 

Argentina and Chile are extremely challenging to map. Their wine laws define most wine regions only by political boundaries. Showing the actual vineyard areas in these political boundaries is necessary. Otherwise, it’s just a political map, as well as a misleading wine map, where Tucumán, which has 0.05% of Argentina’s total vineyard area, is shown the same as Mendoza, which has 70.59%. To plot the vineyard areas takes an enormous amount of time examining satellite imagery. We were also much helped by Brian Ravitsky, Sebastian Zuccardi, Derek Mossman Knapp, Rafael Tirado, Leonardo Erazo, José Lovaglio and David Marcel with their local knowledge.

Includes: all wine regions in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil; detail map of Mendoza.

 

Wine Australia does a fantastic job of getting clear information about their regions out in the world, which made our work a bit easier here. The challenge here was to present all of the overlapping regions on one map legibly. We also took the liberty of showing the unofficial wine sub-regions of Tasmania, which have still not been officially recognized (as is often the case with up and coming regions).

Includes: all Geographic Indications (GIs) including all States/Zones, Regions and Subregions; detail map of regions around Adelaide (ie Barossa Valley, Clare Valley, McLaren Vale, etc).

 

Mapping New Zealand wine regions presented the same challenges as Chile and Argentina: their wine regions are also defined in broad strokes using political boundaries. So again, a great deal of time was spent plotting vineyard areas and potential vineyard areas from satellite imagery.

Includes: all GIs and sub GIs; detail maps of Central Otago, Marlborough, Wairarapa, Hawke's Bay and Gisborne; statistics regarding acreage and major grape varieties of each region.

 

Wines of South Africa is another organization that does a great job of disseminating information about their regions. The only problem is that they’ve made three significant overhauls of their wine laws in the past decade. Like Australia, the challenge here was to present all of the overlapping regions on one map clearly.

Includes: all WO (Wine of Origin) areas: Geographical Units, Regions, Districts, and Wards; generalized wine map of Africa; detail map of Stellenbosch; Northern and Free State detail.

 

Prototypes

Our initial prototypes had a cloth covering, but we found a textured paper covering that is both better looking and more durable.

left: yellow prototype detail, right: cloth and paper prototypes

 

material prototype, without printing or debossing

 

rendering of final design

 

Timeline

The maps are all done with a few exceptions:  maps of the IGP (Vin de Pays) regions of France and the IGP regions of Spain are currently underway.

November 2019 to February 2020: Finalize all graphics, additional maps and updates.

February 2020 to April 2020: Proofing, printing and delivery to our warehouse.

Mid April 2020: All copies sent out to backers.

Dimensions

• Each map is 24 x 36 inches (61 cm x 91.5 cm) unfolded.
• Individual map cases are 6.25 x 9.25 x 0.5 inches (15.9 cm x 22.9 cm x 1.0 cm).
• The boxed set is 10 x 5 x 6.5 inches (25.4 x 12.7 x 16.5 cm).
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Deborah and Steve De Long

De Long is an independent publisher of wine maps, charts, and books founded by Deborah and Steve De Long in 2002. It started with a single product: the Wine Grape Varietal Table, which has now sold over 60,000 copies. Deborah trained as a textile designer and Steve as an architect. Together, they've combined their love of wine and design into products that help people enjoy and learn about wine.

They also work with Mark De Long - a graphic designer and Steve's brother - as well as with freelance cartographers, designers, copywriters, and translators.

our first project: The Wine Grape Varietal Table

 

Thank you for your support!

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