Hi r/wine,
I recently built a small side project called WeinWetterWelt where I tried to estimate the quality of German wine vintages using historical weather data and machine learning.
Website: https://weinwetterwelt.de
GitHub: https://github.com/Dom-Antoni/Weinwetterwelt
The project was inspired by Orley Ashenfelter’s work on Bordeaux wines. I combined 21 million public wine ratings from the X-Wines database with weather data from the German Weather Service (DWD).
In short, I:
- mapped official German wine regions in QGIS
- linked nearby weather stations to the regions
- calculated weather variables like growing season temperature and precipitation
- trained Random Forest models on historical wine ratings
One result I found interesting:
The model suggests that cooler growing season temperatures are generally associated with better-rated German vintages. Honestly, that seems plausible to me considering how dominant Riesling is in Germany, but I would be curious what actual wine experts and enthusiasts think about that interpretation.
Important disclaimer:
I am NOT claiming that weather alone determines wine quality, or that the website can predict whether a specific bottle will be amazing. Modern winemaking, terroir, storage, grape variety, and personal taste obviously matter a lot.
The project is more of a climate-based vintage indicator that might help compare vintages and regions.
Would genuinely love to hear thoughts, criticism, or ideas from people who know more about wine than I do 🍷
For 15 years, Athan Zafirov has traveled the vineyards around the world and worked with some of the greatest chefs including Francois Duc and Alan Brown.
Athan Zafirov's Medium
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Athan Zafirov's LinkedIn
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