Lieu-dit · Balnot-sur-Laignes
La Picarde
La Picarde is a lieu-dit in Balnot-sur-Laignes, Côte des Bar, Champagne, whose largest tier is champagne.
12.1 ha
delimited
224 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
| Level | Champagneinao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (not in this commune) |
|---|---|
| Village | Balnot-sur-Laignes |
| Region | Côte des Bar, Champagne |
| Delimited | 12.1 hainao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (not in this commune) · cadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) |
| Planted | 11.2 hacadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) · ign-bdtopo-vigne (4 September 2026) · ign-rpg-2024 (5 September 2026) |
| Parcels | 20 |
| Grape variety | pinot noir 91 %, chardonnay 7 % 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 | 0%agence-bio-cartobio (c. 5 September 2026) · agence-bio-operateurs (5 September 2026) |
Place in the village
Among the 22 named plots ranked champagne in Balnot-sur-Laignes, from high to low:
Position
224 m
elevation
29.6%
very steep
SE
southeast
mid-slope
concave fold
| Elevation | 224 m 194 to 262 mign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Daytime temperature | −0.02 °C not measurable: smaller than the uncertainty. by day, relative to the village centre at 221 m, ± 0.03 °Cmeteo-france-quotidiennes (6 September 2026) · meteo-france-postes (6 September 2026) · meteo-france-lsh (6 September 2026) · ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| Slope | 29.6% 16.5°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| Aspect | southeast 144°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| On the slope | 37% mid slope, in a concave hollow, 332 m drains onto itign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Bedrock
- 100%Kimmeridgian marl and limestone 155–149 million years
In the glass. Tends towards taut, far from lush white wine with firm acidity. The word salty belongs to the traditional tasting vocabulary for Chablis and does not rest on a demonstrable link with the rock; slope, exposure and soil depth are at least as decisive here.
An alternation of grey marl and harder, shell-rich limestone beds, deposited in a quiet, shallow sea at most a few tens of metres deep. The marl is full of small oysters of the genus Exogyra, the identifying mark of this layer in the field. Upper Jurassic, Kimmeridgian, roughly 155 to 149 million years old.
For the vine. The marl holds water, the limestone beds within it provide drainage and anchorage; together that gives a soil that keeps supplying moisture for a long time in a dry summer without the roots becoming waterlogged in spring, provided there is a slope beneath it. On flat ground the same layer becomes cold and wet. The active lime content is usually high, so chlorosis-resistant rootstocks are needed as a rule, and roots penetrate the soft marl relatively easily.
Characteristic of the slopes of Chablis (grand cru and premier cru) and further of Tonnerre, Épineuil, Irancy and Saint-Bris.
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: j6b-cN.
brgm-bdcharm50 (4 September 2026)Sun and horizon
07:38
above the hill
18:34
behind the hill
10.9 h
sun at harvest
0.5 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 07:38 above the hill and disappears at 18:34 behind the hill: 10.9 hours of direct sun on a clear day. The ridge reaches 25.9° above the horizon to the northwest. The relief costs 0.9% of the irradiation from April to October, direct and diffuse together.
| Irradiation | +3.2% versus flat land 1,025 kWh/m² from April to October, 43% 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 sky | 96.9% 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
| rise | set | sun | day | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 June | 05:54 | 19:28 | 13.6 h | 16.0 h |
| 20 September | 07:38 | 18:34 | 10.9 h | 12.3 h |
| 21 December | 09:12 | 15:41 | 6.5 h | 8.4 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), 40% of the far field is forest (BD Forêt), no buildings.
The irradiation loss does include clouds: the average of 2005 to 2023 (PVGIS-SARAH3, EU JRC), not any particular year.
Air and cold
30 m
above the lowest point
drains far away
cold air
a main drain
67.8 ha flows past
| Cold air | 30 m high on the slope, cold air drains far awayign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Cold air passing through | 67.8 ha a main drain, mean over the polygon 0.52 haign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Planting
SE-NW
down the slope
1.06 m
between the rows
90%
vineyard in 1950
| Rows | SE-NW (143°) down the slope (1°), every 1.06 m, all rows parallelmeasured over 11.2 of 11.2 ha plantedign-bdortho (6 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Vineyard in 1950 | 90% planted since: 1.20 haassessed over 12.1 ha on the 1950-1965 aerial photographign-photos-historiques-1950-1965 (6 September 2026) |
Climate over time
station CRUZY_SAPC, 291 m, 22.7 km away
raw daily series, not corrected for station breaks
Who owns land here
9.98 ha of 12.1 ha delimited is registered to a legal entity
- CHAMPAGNE GREMILLET37%
- GROUPEMENT FONCIER AGRICOLE DU VAL DE RUEIL25%
- SAS CHAMPAGNE GREMILLET6%
- DOMAINE ALEXANDRE BONNET4%
- SCI DU VAL RONCEUX4%
- 2 other legal entities7%
- private individuals or unknown18%
- 3.55 ha GFA DU HAUT DES VIGNES GFA · land company
- 2.97 ha GROUPEMENT FONCIER AGRICOLE DU VAL DE RUEIL GFA · land company
- 0.91 ha GFA LES MONTAUX GFA · land company
- 0.72 ha SAS CHAMPAGNE GREMILLET SAS · wine business
- 0.51 ha DOMAINE ALEXANDRE BONNET SAS · wine business · usufruct
- 0.51 ha SCI DU VAL RONCEUX SCI · land company · bare ownership
- 0.44 ha GFV SAINT VINCENT DE LA MOLINVIERE GFA · land company
- 0.36 ha SCEV DU CLOS DE CHAMPROT SC · land company
Private individuals or unknown: 2.15 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
- La Come Fourrée Champagne · 400 m
- La Chatonne Champagne · 500 m
- Les Envers de Valenne Champagne · 550 m
- La Fontaine Henriot Champagne · 600 m
- Les Montaux Champagne · 900 m
- Les Vaucelles Champagne · 1.0 km
- Vigne Aubry Champagne · 1.0 km
- Bas de Grosmont Champagne · 1.0 km
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.