Lieu-dit · Chenay
Les Cochenes
Les Cochenes is a lieu-dit in Chenay, Vallée de la Marne, Champagne, whose largest tier is champagne.
4.29 ha
delimited
170 m
elevation
11.3 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 | Chenay |
| Region | Vallée de la Marne, Champagne |
| Delimited | 4.29 hainao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (not in this commune) · cadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) |
| Planted | 3.30 hacadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) · ign-bdtopo-vigne (4 September 2026) · ign-rpg-2024 (5 September 2026) |
| Parcels | 28 |
| Grape variety | chardonnay 54 %, pinot noir 34 %, meunier 12 % 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 | 18%agence-bio-cartobio (c. 5 September 2026) · agence-bio-operateurs (5 September 2026) |
Place in the village
Among the 20 named plots ranked champagne in Chenay, from high to low:
Position
170 m
elevation
21.6%
very steep
SSW
south-southwest
upper
concave fold
| Elevation | 170 m 151 to 191 mign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Slope | 21.6% 12.2°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| Aspect | south-southwest 203°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| On the slope | 72% upper slope, in a concave hollow, 122 m drains onto itign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Bedrock
- 96%Ypresian sand, sandstone and conglomerate 56–48 million years
- 3%Ypresian clay with lignite 56–53 million years
Not a borehole: ordered by age, thickness by share of surface.
In the glass. Tends towards lighter, early-ripening wines with supple tannin and an open, fragrant style. How much of that really comes from the sand cannot be separated from planting density, yield and the age of the vines.
Lower Eocene, roughly 56 to 48 million years old. These are deposits of rivers, alluvial fans and lakes on the southern edge of the Paris Basin: loose quartz sands, locally cemented into hard sandstone beds, with gravel layers and conglomerate full of reworked flint from the older chalk. In the ground it is a granular, rust-brown to ochre-yellow mass without solid rock, with clayey interlayers that can appear and disappear again over short distances.
For the vine. Sand drains quickly and generally warms up promptly in spring, which can get root growth going early; whether ripening really runs ahead also depends on aspect, soil depth and yield. Active lime is virtually absent, so chlorosis is rarely an issue here, but the water supply is small: a dry summer is felt immediately unless the roots reach a clay layer or the limestone beneath. Because the water drains away anyway, a steep slope is not needed for drainage; many of these plots therefore lie flat, and on flat terrain cold air lingers, with a real risk of late spring frost.
In Bourgogne mainly as a Tertiary cover on the plateaux and along the western edge of the Bresse, in the Chalonnais and the Mâconnais.
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: e4b, e4a.
brgm-bdcharm50 (4 September 2026)Sun and horizon
08:22
above the hill
19:37
behind the hill
11.3 h
sun at harvest
0.6 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 08:22 above the hill and disappears at 19:37 behind the hill: 11.3 hours of direct sun on a clear day. The ridge reaches 19.0° above the horizon to the north-northeast.
| Irradiation | +4.2% versus flat land 1,039 kWh/m² from April to October, 44% 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 | 99.1% 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
| rise | set | sun | day | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 June | 07:32 | 20:59 | 13.4 h | 16.3 h |
| 20 September | 08:22 | 19:37 | 11.3 h | 12.3 h |
| 21 December | 08:55 | 16:47 | 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
45 m
above the lowest point
drains far away
cold air
little inflow
0.7 ha flows past
| Cold air | 45 m high on the slope, cold air drains far awayign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Cold air passing through | 0.7 ha little inflow, mean over the polygon 0.09 haign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Planting
NNE-SSW
down the slope
1.09 m
between the rows
100%
vineyard in 1950
| Rows | NNE-SSW (26°) down the slope (3°), every 1.09 m, all rows parallelmeasured over 3.1 of 3.3 ha plantedign-bdortho (6 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Vineyard in 1950 | 100%assessed over 2.6 ha on the 1950-1965 aerial photographign-photos-historiques-1950-1965 (6 September 2026) |
Climate over time
station REIMS-COURCY, 91 m, 9.0 km away
growing season, April to October: 1951-1980: 14.1 °C, 1991-2020: 15.0 °C
Huglin index: 1951-1980: 1,477, 1991-2020: 1,639
last spring frost: 1951-1980: day 118, 1991-2020: day 107
raw daily series, not corrected for station breaks
Who owns land here
1.60 ha of 4.29 ha delimited is registered to a legal entity
- DOMAINE DU MONTCHENOIS23%
- SCE LA VOIE DES LOUPS5%
- SARL DE L'ABBAYE5%
- FONCIERE CHAMPENOISE FRANCE VALLEY I2%
- L'ALTAVILLOISE2%
- private individuals or unknown63%
- 0.98 ha DOMAINE DU MONTCHENOIS GFA · land company
- 0.23 ha SCE LA VOIE DES LOUPS SC · land company · organic
- 0.20 ha SARL DE L'ABBAYE SARL · other
- 0.10 ha FONCIERE CHAMPENOISE FRANCE VALLEY II SA · other
- 0.09 ha L'ALTAVILLOISE SARL · other
Private individuals or unknown: 2.69 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
- Les Saulx a Dos Champagne · 150 m
- Les Moines Vats Champagne · 150 m
- Les Vitres Champagne · 250 m
- Les Gloriettes Champagne · 350 m
- Les Croix Champagne · 350 m
- Au-Dessus des Croix Champagne · 450 m
- Dessous Moncel Champagne · 450 m
- Le Champ la Ville Champagne · 500 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.