Terroirium NederlandsFrançais

Lieu-dit · Aÿ-Champagne

Le Cognet - Robert

Le Cognet - Robert is a lieu-dit in Aÿ-Champagne, Montagne de Reims, Champagne, whose largest tier is grand cru.

3.84 ha

delimited

101 m

elevation

10.9 h

sun at harvest

Open on the mapWith the boundary, the plots, the sun through the year and the bedrock.

In figures

LevelGrand Cruinao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (not in this commune)
VillageAÿ-Champagne
RegionMontagne de Reims, Champagne
Delimited3.84 hainao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (not in this commune) · cadastre-etalab (4 September 2026)
Planted3.74 hacadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) · ign-bdtopo-vigne (4 September 2026) · ign-rpg-2024 (5 September 2026)
Parcels105
Grape varietypinot noir 68 %, chardonnay 29 %, meunier 3 % 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)
Organic19%agence-bio-cartobio (c. 5 September 2026) · agence-bio-operateurs (5 September 2026)

Place in the village

Among the 106 named plots ranked grand cru in Aÿ-Champagne, from high to low:

sun at harvest 87
elevation 80
slope 86
on the slope 85

Position

101 m

elevation

8.8%

firm

WSW

west-southwest

foot

concave fold

Elevation101 m 93 to 111 mign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)
Daytime temperature+0.16 °C by day, relative to the village centre at 122 m, ± 0.07 °Cmeteo-france-quotidiennes (6 September 2026) · meteo-france-postes (6 September 2026) · meteo-france-lsh (6 September 2026) · ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)
Slope8.8% 5.0°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)
Aspectwest-southwest 247°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)
On the slope17% foot of the slope, in a concave hollow, 1,361 m drains onto itign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)

Bedrock

youngold
  • 3%Undifferentiated slope deposits Kwartair, hoofdzakelijk Weichselien (niet gedateerd)
  • 62%Colluvium, mixed slope deposit about 0.1–⁠0 million years
  • 35%Campanian chalk with belemnites 78–⁠72 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, c5b, SC.

brgm-bdcharm50 (4 September 2026)

Sun and horizon

08:23

above the hill

19:16

behind the hill

10.9 h

sun at harvest

1.0 h

lost to the hill

Grey: sun up, but behind the hill or the vineyard's own slope.

Around harvest the sun rises here at 08:23 above the hill and disappears at 19:16 behind the hill: 10.9 hours of direct sun on a clear day. The ridge reaches 12.1° above the horizon to the northeast.

Irradiation+0.5% versus flat land 1,002 kWh/m² from April to October, 46% 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)
Open sky99.1% of the sky the slope itself sees; the surrounding relief blocks the restign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) · ign-lidarhd-mnh (6 September 2026) · ign-bdforet-v2 (5 September 2026)
Three reference days and the caveat
risesetsunday
21 June07:0421:1814.2 h16.2 h
20 September08:2319:1610.9 h12.3 h
21 December09:0416:217.3 h8.2 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), 36% of the far field is forest (BD Forêt), no buildings.

ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) · ign-lidarhd-mnh (6 September 2026) · ign-bdforet-v2 (5 September 2026)

Air and cold

10 m

above the lowest point

drains away

cold air

a main drain

591.3 ha flows past

Cold air10 m above the hollow, cold air drains awayign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)
Cold air passing through591.3 ha a main drain, mean over the polygon 24.70 haign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)

Planting

ENE-WSW

down the slope

1.15 m

between the rows

94%

vineyard in 1950

RowsENE-WSW (76°) down the slope (9°), every 1.15 m, slightly fannedmeasured over 2.1 of 3.7 ha plantedign-bdortho (6 September 2026)
Vineyard in 195094% planted since: 0.12 haassessed over 2.1 ha on the 1950-1965 aerial photographign-photos-historiques-1950-1965 (6 September 2026)

Climate over time

19802000202012°14°16°18°

station FAGNIERES-INRAE, 105 m, 23.5 km away

raw daily series, not corrected for station breaks

Who owns land here

0.79 ha of 3.84 ha delimited is registered to a legal entity

  • CHAMPAGNE BOLLINGER9%
  • CHAMPAGNE DUVAL LEROY4%
  • GRANDS VIGNOBLES DE CHAMPAGNE3%
  • ALAIN THIENOT2%
  • DES SAINTS GEORGES2%
  • 1 other legal entity<1%
  • private individuals or unknown80%

Private individuals or unknown: 3.06 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

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.