Lieu-dit · Chervey
Côte du Val Hérard
Côte du Val Hérard is a lieu-dit in Chervey, Côte des Bar, Champagne, whose largest tier is champagne.
5.81 ha
delimited
261 m
elevation
9.6 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 | Chervey |
| Region | Côte des Bar, Champagne |
| Delimited | 5.81 hainao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (not in this commune) · cadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) |
| Planted | 4.77 hacadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) · ign-bdtopo-vigne (4 September 2026) · ign-rpg-2024 (5 September 2026) |
| Parcels | 15 |
| Grape variety | pinot noir 87 %, chardonnay 13 % 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 20 named plots ranked champagne in Chervey, from high to low:
Position
261 m
elevation
29.7%
very steep
ENE
east-northeast
upper
even slope
| Elevation | 261 m 234 to 289 mign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Daytime temperature | −0.05 °C by day, relative to the village centre at 250 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 | 29.7% 16.5°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| Aspect | east-northeast 76°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| On the slope | 51% upper slope, on an even plane, 331 m drains onto itign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Bedrock
- 66%Portlandian limestone of the Barrois 150–143 million years
- 34%Kimmeridgian marl and limestone 155–149 million years
Not a borehole: ordered by age, thickness by share of surface.
In the glass. Tends towards lighter, linear, early-drinking white wine with less body than the marl slopes. That is the classic picture of Petit Chablis, although it presumably owes at least as much to the high, cool and often less favourably exposed position as to the rock.
Hard, fine and fairly pure limestone that lies like a lid on the plateaux above the Kimmeridgian slopes. It formed in a period when hardly any clay was carried in from the land, so the lime stayed compact and stony; at the base there are still a few marl beds. Latest Jurassic, Portlandian, the regional stage that covers roughly the upper part of the international Tithonian; the source dates the unit to the zones with Cyprina brongniarti and Gravesia, the lower of which still lies against the top of the Kimmeridgian, roughly 150 to 143 million years.
For the vine. On the plateaux there is often only a thin, very stony soil on the rock here, which dries quickly and in hot years gives water stress sooner than the marl lower down the slope. The open position makes the parcel windy and cool, but on clear nights cold air drains away to the lower parts, so the plateau generally suffers less frost damage than the valley floor. A stony topsoil warms up slightly faster by day, although that effect is small next to slope and exposure; the soils are very rich in lime and rooting stays shallow unless the rock is heavily fissured.
The plateaux around Chablis, where most of Petit Chablis lies, and the uplands of the Tonnerrois.
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: j6c-7a, j6b-cN.
brgm-bdcharm50 (4 September 2026)Sun and horizon
08:22
above the hill
17:56
behind the hill
9.6 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 08:22 above the hill and disappears at 17:56 behind the hill: 9.6 hours of direct sun on a clear day. The ridge reaches 17.6° above the horizon to the west. The relief costs 1.0% of the irradiation from April to October, direct and diffuse together.
| Irradiation | −5.6% versus flat land 938 kWh/m² from April to October, 47% 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 | 97.1% 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 | 06:23 | 20:00 | 13.6 h | 16.1 h |
| 20 September | 08:22 | 17:56 | 9.6 h | 12.3 h |
| 21 December | 10:07 | 14:50 | 4.7 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), 33% 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
32 m
above the lowest point
drains far away
cold air
a main drain
62.2 ha flows past
| Cold air | 32 m high on the slope, cold air drains far awayign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Cold air passing through | 62.2 ha a main drain, mean over the polygon 0.52 haign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Planting
E-W
down the slope
1.10 m
between the rows
100%
vineyard in 1950
| Rows | E-W (81°) down the slope (5°), every 1.10 m, all rows parallelmeasured over 4.7 of 4.8 ha plantedign-bdortho (6 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Vineyard in 1950 | 100% rows then ran 28° differentlyassessed over 5.8 ha on the 1950-1965 aerial photographign-photos-historiques-1950-1965 (6 September 2026) |
Climate over time
station LES-RICEYS, 185 m, 17.3 km away
raw daily series, not corrected for station breaks
The name
- cote
- slope, the flank of a ridge. The word that gave the whole region its name. Relief · Association des Climats du vignoble de Bourgogne, Les noms des Climats (2026)
- val
- valley. Vaux and vau are the same root in the plural and in older form. Relief · Frédéric Godefroy, Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française (1881)
This is about the words, not about this plot: the same name can have arisen differently elsewhere.
Who owns land here
3.42 ha of 5.81 ha delimited is registered to a legal entity
- COMMUNE DE CHERVEY49%
- VRANKEN-POMMERY PRODUCTION10%
- private individuals or unknown41%
- 2.83 ha COMMUNE DE CHERVEY COM · public
- 0.59 ha VRANKEN-POMMERY PRODUCTION SAS · other
Private individuals or unknown: 2.39 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
- Au-Dessus des Copies Champagne · 350 m
- Commelle de Neple Champagne · 350 m
- Val Hérard Champagne · 400 m
- Les Copies-Est Champagne · 450 m
- Au-Dessus de la Voie d'Allier Champagne · 450 m
- Les Copies Champagne · 500 m
- Au-Dessus de la Voie de Chacenay Champagne · 550 m
- Laury Champagne · 750 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.