Lieu-dit · Ambonnay
Les Blanches Voies
Les Blanches Voies is a lieu-dit in Ambonnay, Montagne de Reims, Champagne, whose largest tier is grand cru.
4.51 ha
delimited
121 m
elevation
11.9 h
sun at harvest
Open on the mapWith the boundary, the plots, the sun through the year and the bedrock.
In figures
| Level | Grand Cruinao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (not in this commune) |
|---|---|
| Village | Ambonnay |
| Region | Montagne de Reims, Champagne |
| Delimited | 4.51 hainao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (not in this commune) · cadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) |
| Planted | 4.38 hacadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) · ign-bdtopo-vigne (4 September 2026) · ign-rpg-2024 (5 September 2026) |
| Parcels | 50 |
| Grape variety | pinot noir 81 %, chardonnay 19 % also permitted: arbane, petit meslier, pinot blanc, pinot grisinao-cahiers-des-charges (7 September 2026) · dgddi-superficies-produits (7 September 2026) · franceagrimer-observatoire-viticulture (7 September 2026) |
| Organic | 5%agence-bio-cartobio (c. 5 September 2026) · agence-bio-operateurs (5 September 2026) |
Place in the village
Among the 76 named plots ranked grand cru in Ambonnay, from high to low:
Position
121 m
elevation
5.3%
gentle
ESE
east-southeast
foot
even slope
| Elevation | 121 m 116 to 129 mign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Slope | 5.3% 3.0°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| Aspect | east-southeast 119°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| On the slope | 17% foot of the slope, on an even plane, 360 m drains onto itign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Bedrock
- 75%Colluvium, mixed slope deposit about 0.1–0 million years
- 25%Santonian chalk of Châlons 86–84 million years
Not a borehole: ordered by age, thickness by share of surface.
In the glass. As a group, colluvium says little about flavour on its own. In practice the rounder, earlier-approachable wines often sit on the thicker colluvial fans, while tension and ageing potential are more closely tied to slope, soil depth and vine age. (weak indication)
Not a true formation but a collective name for material that has come down from higher up the slope: limestone scree, lumps of marl, clay and loess, worked together by gravity, frost and rainwater. Most of it was deposited during and after the last ice ages, roughly the past hundred thousand years, and the process is still going on. What exactly is in the ground depends entirely on what lies upslope, so the same map colour can mean something slightly different from village to village.
For the vine. Usually loose, stony and deep, so the roots can go far and surplus water drains away quickly. Thanks to the fine material between the stones, colluvium generally holds more moisture in a dry summer than the thin soil on the bare rock above. At the bottom of the slope the deposit becomes thicker and finer, and because of the low position it is cooler and wetter there; where it contains a lot of limestone scree the active lime content can run high.
Characteristic of the mid and lower slopes of the whole Côte d'Or, including the scree fans at the mouths of the combes, as at Gevrey-Chambertin below the Combe Lavaux.
BRGM geological map at 1:50,000. It tells vineyards apart, not plots within a vineyard. The link between rock and taste is indirect: soil depth, water and warmth do the work, and slope, vine age and the cellar do the rest. Units on that map: C, c4.
brgm-bdcharm50 (4 September 2026)Sun and horizon
07:36
above the hill
19:29
behind the crest of the slope
11.9 h
sun at harvest
Grey: sun up, behind the hill or its own slope.
Around harvest the sun rises here at 07:36 above the hill and disappears at 19:29 behind the crest of the slope: 11.9 hours of direct sun on a clear day. The ridge reaches 5.5° above the horizon to the north.
| Irradiation | +0.7% versus flat land 1,024 kWh/m² from April to October, 45% of it diffuseunder the average cloudiness of 2005 to 2023 (PVGIS-SARAH3, EU JRC); direct, diffuse and reflected light togetherign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) · ign-lidarhd-mnh (6 September 2026) · ign-bdforet-v2 (5 September 2026) · jrc-pvgis-sarah3 (10 September 2026) |
|---|
Three reference days, the caveat
| rise | set | sun | day | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 June | 05:58 | 21:26 | 15.5 h | 16.2 h |
| 20 September | 07:36 | 19:29 | 11.9 h | 12.3 h |
| 21 December | 08:37 | 16:32 | 7.9 h | 8.2 h |
Computed from the IGN elevation model at 5 m: horizon in 36 directions up to six kilometres, sun position per minute, angle of incidence on the mean slope. Clear sky, with the tree canopy from the IGN forest inventory as a raised horizon (15 m closed forest, 5 m heath, trees within 60 m ignored), 24% of the far field is forest (BD Forêt), no buildings.
Air and cold
9 m
above the lowest point
comes close
cold air
a main drain
152.4 ha flows past
| Cold air | 9 m low on the slope, cold air comes closeign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Cold air passing through | 152.4 ha a main drain, mean over the polygon 6.24 haign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Planting
ENE-WSW
diagonal to the slope
1.17 m
between the rows
100%
vineyard in 1950
| Rows | ENE-WSW (67°) diagonal to the slope (52°), every 1.17 m, varies by plotmeasured over 4.1 of 4.4 ha plantedign-bdortho (6 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Vineyard in 1950 | 100%assessed over 4.1 ha on the 1950-1965 aerial photographign-photos-historiques-1950-1965 (6 September 2026) |
Climate over time
station FAGNIERES-INRAE, 105 m, 19.5 km away
raw daily series, not corrected for station breaks
The name
- blanc
- white, almost always about the colour of the soil or of the rock coming through. Soil and stone · Terroirium, Eigen telling over de namen in deze atlas (2026)
- voie
- road, often an old through route. Shape and position · Gérard Taverdet, Noms de lieux de Bourgogne (2007)
This is about the words, not about this plot: the same name can have arisen differently elsewhere.
Who owns land here
1.05 ha of 4.51 ha delimited is registered to a legal entity
- TAITTINGER COMPAGNIE COMMERCIALE ET VITICOLE CHAMPENOISE9%
- GROUPEMENT FONCIER AGRICOLE ET VITICOLE SOMELI7%
- LE MONT DES TOURS2%
- S L C A P2%
- R H COUTIER2%
- 1 other legal entity1%
- private individuals or unknown77%
- 0.43 ha TAITTINGER COMPAGNIE COMMERCIALE ET VITICOLE CHAMPENOISE SAS · wine business
- 0.32 ha GROUPEMENT FONCIER AGRICOLE ET VITICOLE SOMELI GFA · land company
- 0.10 ha LE MONT DES TOURS GFA · land company
- 0.08 ha S L C A P GFA · land company
- 0.07 ha R H COUTIER SCEA · wine business · organic
- 0.06 ha GROUPEMENT FONCIER AGRICOLE HURET COLAS GFA AUPM · other
Private individuals or unknown: 3.46 ha.
Share of the delimited hectares. Only legal entities are public in France; everything else stays unnamed. From the public register of legal entities (DGFiP), as of 1 January 2025. The owner is not always the one who works the vineyard: tenancy is common.
Nearby lieux-dits
- Le Haut des Blanches Voies Grand Cru · 200 m
- Les Cheminots Grand Cru · 200 m
- Le Bout dû Clos Grand Cru · 250 m
- La Goisse Grand Cru · 250 m
- Le Bas de la Guillotte Grand Cru · 300 m
- Le Bas des Cheminots Grand Cru · 350 m
- Le Bas des Tourés Grand Cru · 350 m
- La Châtelaine Grand Cru · 400 m
In the same village, measured between label points. That does not say which ones border each other; the map shows that.
Where each figure comes from
- Classification
- The INAO delimitation per denomination, cut against the cadastral parcel. Only the INAO's own plans are legally binding; this map is informational.
- Area
- Computed on the sphere from longitude and latitude (turf.area), not in Lambert-93. For an appellation this is the union of the INAO polygons across commune boundaries, measured on the unclosed geometry; the fifteen metres used to close the outline for the map are not counted. For a climat it is the union of the cadastral lieu-dit polygons with that name.
- Planted
- Parcel area times vineyard cover, where cover comes from the IGN vegetation layer supplemented by the agricultural declaration. Checked against the customs harvest declarations: median deviation 5.1 per cent over a hundred appellations.
- Elevation
- Mean of the elevation-model cells whose centre falls inside the polygon, on a 5 m grid.
- Slope
- Per-cell slope from the elevation model using Horn's method, then averaged over the cells in the polygon.
- Aspect
- Vector mean of the per-cell aspect. A plain average would turn north-east and north-west into south.
- Sun at harvest
- Hours of direct sun on 20 September under a clear sky, with the horizon in 36 directions out to six kilometres and the height of woods and buildings on top of it. Canopy height is measured where LiDAR HD covers the area and estimated from BD Forêt where it does not; the panel states which of the two was used.
- Grape variety by appellation
- Per appellation and colour the permitted varieties from the approved cahier des charges; per appellation and tier the declared hectares of white and red from the customs harvest declaration (product codes). One colour permitted: the main variety of that colour. Two colours: from 85 percent of the hectares that colour applies, in between it is called mixed. Champagne: the dominant variety from the planted hectares per variety per commune from FranceAgriMer. Per polygon the dominant variety of its parts by area. Derived, not measured: the variety per plot exists only in the customs vineyard register, which is not public. In a two-colour appellation a single plot may carry the other variety. Customs withhold small appellations (statistical secrecy), in which case the split is missing.
- Bedrock
- The geological unit covering the largest share of the polygon, from the 1:50,000 geological map. At 1:50,000 the map separates one climat from another, but not what varies inside a climat.
- Organic
- Share of the area certified organic or in conversion, from the CartoBio plot register.