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Lieu-dit · Chigny-les-Roses

Les Coutures d'en Bas

Les Coutures d'en Bas is a lieu-dit in Chigny-les-Roses, Montagne de Reims, Champagne, whose largest tier is premier cru.

7.93 ha

delimited

122 m

elevation

12.0 h

sun at harvest

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

In figures

LevelPremier Cruinao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (not in this commune)
VillageChigny-les-Roses
RegionMontagne de Reims, Champagne
Delimited7.93 hainao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (not in this commune) · cadastre-etalab (4 September 2026)
Planted7.72 hacadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) · ign-bdtopo-vigne (4 September 2026) · ign-rpg-2024 (5 September 2026)
Parcels67
Grape varietymeunier 54 %, pinot noir 26 %, chardonnay 20 % 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)
Organic1%agence-bio-cartobio (c. 5 September 2026) · agence-bio-operateurs (5 September 2026)

Place in the village

Among the 32 named plots ranked premier cru in Chigny-les-Roses, from high to low:

sun at harvest 1
elevation 32
slope 32
on the slope 25

Position

122 m

elevation

3.1%

gentle

NNW

north-northwest

foot

even slope

Elevation122 m 117 to 130 mign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)
Daytime temperature+0.16 °C by day, relative to the village centre at 144 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)
Slope3.1% 1.8°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)
Aspectnorth-northwest 341°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)
On the slope17% foot of the slope, on an even plane, 290 m drains onto itign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)

Bedrock

youngold
  • 62%Colluvium, mixed slope deposit about 0.1–⁠0 million years
  • 18%Stratified frost scree and colluvium 0.115–⁠0.012 million years (laatste ijstijd)
  • 20%Plateau loam, decalcified silt about 0.2–⁠0.01 million years (rough estimate)

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, LP, GP.

brgm-bdcharm50 (4 September 2026)

Sun and horizon

07:33

above the hill

19:35

behind the hill

12.0 h

sun at harvest

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

Around harvest the sun rises here at 07:33 above the hill and disappears at 19:35 behind the hill: 12.0 hours of direct sun on a clear day. The ridge reaches 4.7° above the horizon to the south-southwest.

Irradiation−1.0% versus flat land 977 kWh/m² from April to October, 48% 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 sky99.8% 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 June05:4621:4315.9 h16.2 h
20 September07:3319:3512.0 h12.3 h
21 December09:0116:087.1 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), 42% 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

6 m

above the lowest point

comes close

cold air

a main drain

314.4 ha flows past

Cold air6 m low on the slope, cold air comes closeign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)
Cold air passing through314.4 ha a main drain, mean over the polygon 6.72 haign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)

Planting

ESE-WNW

diagonal to the slope

1.22 m

between the rows

100%

vineyard in 1950

RowsESE-WNW (111°) diagonal to the slope (50°), every 1.22 m, varies by plotmeasured over 7.5 of 7.7 ha plantedign-bdortho (6 September 2026)
Vineyard in 1950100%assessed over 7.7 ha on the 1950-1965 aerial photographign-photos-historiques-1950-1965 (6 September 2026)

Climate over time

19601980200014°16°

station REIMS-COURCY, 91 m, 16.4 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

The name

coutures
worked arable land, from Latin cultura. It says the ground was ploughed, not that vines stood on it. Work and use · Frédéric Godefroy, Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française (1881)
bas
low, the lower part of a named plot. Shape and position · Terroirium, Eigen telling over de namen in deze atlas (2026)

This is about the words, not about this plot: the same name can have arisen differently elsewhere.

Who owns land here

2.14 ha of 7.93 ha delimited is registered to a legal entity

  • GFA LE MONT THIBE8%
  • CHAMPAGNE DUMENIL REBEYROLLE6%
  • SAS LES ROCHES BLANCHES3%
  • GROUPEMENT AGRICOLE FONCIER DU CLOS DU MOULIN3%
  • MONEY VINEYARDS3%
  • 7 other legal entities6%
  • private individuals or unknown73%

Private individuals or unknown: 5.79 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.