Lieu-dit · Chardonnay
Les Crays
Les Crays is a lieu-dit in Chardonnay, Mâconnais, Burgundy, whose largest tier is regional.
7.96 ha
delimited
267 m
elevation
10.6 h
sun at harvest
Open on the mapWith the boundary, the plots, the sun through the year and the bedrock.
In figures
| Level | Regionalinao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (c. 4 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Village | Chardonnay |
| Region | Mâconnais, Burgundy |
| Delimited | 7.96 hainao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (c. 4 September 2026) · cadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) |
| Planted | 5.49 hacadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) · ign-bdtopo-vigne (5 September 2026) · ign-rpg-2024 (5 September 2026) |
| Parcels | 39 |
| Grape variety | pinot noir, gamay also permitted: chardonnay, pinot blanc, pinot grisinao-cahiers-des-charges (7 September 2026) · dgddi-superficies-produits (7 September 2026) · franceagrimer-observatoire-viticulture (7 September 2026) |
| Organic | 17%agence-bio-cartobio (c. 5 September 2026) · agence-bio-operateurs (5 September 2026) |
Place in the village
Among the 62 named plots ranked regional in Chardonnay, from high to low:
Position
267 m
elevation
14.7%
steep
W
west
mid-slope
concave fold
| Elevation | 267 m 251 to 289 mign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Daytime temperature | +0.11 °C by day, relative to the village centre at 282 m, ± 0.02 °Cmeteo-france-quotidiennes (18 September 2026) · meteo-france-postes (6 September 2026) · meteo-france-lsh (6 September 2026) · ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| Slope | 14.7% 8.4°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| Aspect | west 269°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| On the slope | 22% mid slope, in a concave hollow, 214 m drains onto itign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Bedrock
- 47%Nantoux limestone and Mercurey marl 157–155 million years
- 53%Marl and marly limestone, upper Bathonian to Oxfordian (undifferentiated) 166–155 million years
Not a borehole: ordered by age, thickness by share of surface.
In the glass. Tends towards fuller, firmer wine that opens slowly. Because this is a collective code that lumps many different layers together, the designation says relatively little on its own. (weak indication)
A collective code: the mapper has not subdivided the marls of the Middle and Upper Jurassic here. Marl is a mixture of clay and lime mud that settled in calmer, slightly deeper water beside the sandbanks. It is a soft, weakly consolidated rock: a grey to blue-grey mass that crumbles when dry and sticks when wet, with thin harder beds of marly limestone in between.
For the vine. Marl retains water and, on plots where the roots reach it, provides an important reserve for the dry summer months. Against that, the soil warms slowly in spring, compacts quickly and becomes saturated in a wet year, so this substrate works poorly without a real slope. The lime content varies from bed to bed, with a clear chlorosis risk in the more lime-rich layers.
Occurs scattered on the upper slopes of the Côte and in the Hautes-Côtes, where the map sheets have not subdivided the marls further.
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: j3-5, j5c.
brgm-bdcharm50 (4 September 2026)Sun and horizon
08:23
above the hill
18:57
behind the hill
10.6 h
sun at harvest
0.9 h
lost to the hill
Grey: sun up, behind the hill or its own slope.
Around harvest the sun rises here at 08:23 above the hill and disappears at 18:57 behind the hill: 10.6 hours of direct sun on a clear day. The ridge reaches 9.4° above the horizon to the east. The relief costs 0.5% of the irradiation from April to October, direct and diffuse together.
| Irradiation | −1.1% versus flat land 1,048 kWh/m² from April to October, 41% 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 | 98.4% 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, the caveat
| rise | set | sun | day | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 June | 06:49 | 20:34 | 13.8 h | 15.8 h |
| 20 September | 08:23 | 18:57 | 10.6 h | 12.3 h |
| 21 December | 09:19 | 16:30 | 7.2 h | 8.6 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), 38% 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
16 m
above the lowest point
drains away
cold air
a gully
2.8 ha flows past
| Cold air | 16 m above the hollow, cold air drains awayign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Cold air passing through | 2.8 ha a gully, mean over the polygon 0.21 haign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Planting
E-W
down the slope
1.36 m
between the rows
99%
vineyard in 1950
| Rows | E-W (100°) down the slope (11°), every 1.36 m, all rows parallelmeasured over 3.4 of 5.5 ha plantedign-bdortho (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Vineyard in 1950 | 99% abandoned since: 1.31 ha, rows then ran 22° differentlyassessed over 4.7 ha on the 1950-1965 aerial photographign-photos-historiques-1950-1965 (6 September 2026) |
Climate over time
station MACON, 219 m, 24.1 km away
growing season, April to October: 1951-1980: 15.4 °C, 1991-2020: 17.1 °C
Huglin index: 1951-1980: 1,718, 1991-2020: 2,022
last spring frost: 1951-1980: day 96, 1991-2020: day 85
series homogenised through 2022
The name
- cras
- stony rubble and coarse limestone scree, probably from Gaulish cracos. Crots is a different root and means pit or hollow. Soil and stone · BIVB, Des Climats uniques nés d'un environnement naturel varié (2019)
This is about the words, not about this plot: the same name can have arisen differently elsewhere.
Who owns land here
No parcel here is registered to a legal entity. In France only those owners are public; parcels of private individuals are not.
Nearby lieux-dits
- Les Perrières Regional · 250 m
- Vers Saule Regional · 250 m
- Les Bluses Regional · 250 m
- La Pugette Regional · 250 m
- Le Grand Pré Regional · 250 m
- La Bussiere Regional · 350 m
- Le Rompoix Regional · 350 m
- Bois Rue Regional · 350 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.