Lieu-dit · Chigny-les-Roses
Les Coutures d'en Haut
Les Coutures d'en Haut is a lieu-dit in Chigny-les-Roses, Montagne de Reims, Champagne, whose largest tier is premier cru.
10.5 ha
delimited
127 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
| Level | Premier Cruinao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (not in this commune) |
|---|---|
| Village | Chigny-les-Roses |
| Region | Montagne de Reims, Champagne |
| Delimited | 10.5 hainao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (not in this commune) · cadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) |
| Planted | 10.1 hacadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) · ign-bdtopo-vigne (4 September 2026) · ign-rpg-2024 (5 September 2026) |
| Parcels | 71 |
| Grape variety | meunier 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) |
| Organic | 2%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:
Position
127 m
elevation
4.7%
gentle
NNW
north-northwest
mid-slope
even slope
| Elevation | 127 m 120 to 143 mign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Slope | 4.7% 2.7°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| Aspect | north-northwest 344°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| On the slope | 21% mid slope, on an even plane, 178 m drains onto itign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Bedrock
- 18%Stratified frost scree and colluvium 0.115–0.012 million years (laatste ijstijd)
- 67%Plateau loam, decalcified silt about 0.2–0.01 million years (rough estimate)
- 15%Campanian chalk with belemnites 78–72 million years
Not a borehole: ordered by age, thickness by share of surface.
In the glass. Tends towards fruity, supple wine with less firmness than the limestone slopes alongside. That is mainly due to the deep, water-retaining soil and the flat, cooler position; altitude and aspect weigh more heavily here than the material itself. (weak indication)
Partly fine dust carried in by the wind during the ice ages, partly weathering residue of the underlying limestone, left behind on the plateaus and decalcified by rainwater. That mixed origin also explains the flint nodules that occur in it. It is silt, smooth and homogeneous between the fingers, mainly late Pleistocene, with older reworked material in it.
For the vine. Holds water exceptionally well and is easily rooted, so drought is rarely the problem here. On the flat plateau the downside is that the soil stays cold, gets going late and can be waterlogged in spring. Because the material is decalcified, chlorosis hardly plays a part, but vigour all the more so.
Mainly on the plateaus above the Côte, in the Hautes-Côtes and around the Chablisien.
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: LP, GP, c5b.
brgm-bdcharm50 (4 September 2026)Sun and horizon
07:34
above the hill
19:35
behind the hill
12.0 h
sun at harvest
Grey: sun up, behind the hill or its own slope.
Around harvest the sun rises here at 07:34 above the hill and disappears at 19:35 behind the hill: 12.0 hours of direct sun on a clear day. The ridge reaches 4.4° above the horizon to the south.
| Irradiation | −1.5% versus flat land 972 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) |
|---|
Three reference days, the caveat
| rise | set | sun | day | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 June | 05:41 | 21:48 | 16.1 h | 16.2 h |
| 20 September | 07:34 | 19:35 | 12.0 h | 12.3 h |
| 21 December | 09:02 | 16:11 | 7.2 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), 42% of the far field is forest (BD Forêt), no buildings.
Air and cold
9 m
above the lowest point
comes close
cold air
a gully
3.6 ha flows past
| Cold air | 9 m low on the slope, cold air comes closeign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Cold air passing through | 3.6 ha a gully, mean over the polygon 0.25 haign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Planting
ESE-WNW
diagonal to the slope
1.13 m
between the rows
100%
vineyard in 1950
| Rows | ESE-WNW (110°) diagonal to the slope (54°), every 1.13 m, varies by plotmeasured over 10.1 of 10.1 ha plantedign-bdortho (6 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Vineyard in 1950 | 100%assessed over 9.5 ha on the 1950-1965 aerial photographign-photos-historiques-1950-1965 (6 September 2026) |
Climate over time
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)
- haut
- high, the upper part of a named plot. Almost always paired with a bas below it. 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
1.21 ha of 10.5 ha delimited is registered to a legal entity
- DU MOULIN A VENT9%
- GFA LE MONT THIBE3%
- private individuals or unknown88%
- 0.95 ha DU MOULIN A VENT GFA · land company
- 0.27 ha GFA LE MONT THIBE GFA · land company
Private individuals or unknown: 9.24 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 Coutures d'en Bas Premier Cru · 150 m
- Les Houssets Premier Cru · 350 m
- Les Bassignons Premier Cru · 400 m
- Les Champs Goulats Premier Cru · 400 m
- Les Carisets d'en Bas Premier Cru · 450 m
- Les Ruelles Premier Cru · 500 m
- Les Noues Premier Cru · 500 m
- Les Petites Crières Premier Cru · 550 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.