Lieu-dit · Écueil
Les Blanches Vignes
Les Blanches Vignes is a lieu-dit in Écueil, Montagne de Reims, Champagne, whose largest tier is premier cru.
3.30 ha
delimited
136 m
elevation
11.7 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 | Écueil |
| Region | Montagne de Reims, Champagne |
| Delimited | 3.30 hainao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (not in this commune) · cadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) |
| Planted | 3.23 hacadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) · ign-bdtopo-vigne (4 September 2026) · ign-rpg-2024 (5 September 2026) |
| Parcels | 24 |
| Grape variety | pinot noir 79 %, chardonnay 14 %, meunier 6 % 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 | 11%agence-bio-cartobio (c. 5 September 2026) · agence-bio-operateurs (5 September 2026) |
Place in the village
Among the 43 named plots ranked premier cru in Écueil, from high to low:
Position
136 m
elevation
6.4%
firm
ENE
east-northeast
mid-slope
convex ridge
| Elevation | 136 m 130 to 141 mign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Daytime temperature | +0.19 °C by day, relative to the village centre at 163 m, ± 0.08 °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 | 6.4% 3.7°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| Aspect | east-northeast 73°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| On the slope | 21% mid slope, on a convex ridge, 81 m drains onto itign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Bedrock
- 90%Thanetian sand of Châlons-sur-Vesle 59–56 million years
- 10%Campanian chalk with belemnites 78–72 million years
Not a borehole: ordered by age, thickness by share of surface.
In the glass. Lighter and more aromatic than wines from chalk, in so far as that can be established. The cause lies in the small water store and the early ripening, not in the sand as such.
Marine sands, often greenish from glauconite and locally full of shells, sometimes with flint gravel at the base. This is the first Tertiary sediment deposited on the chalk, in the Late Palaeocene, roughly 59 to 56 million years ago. In the ground it is loose, granular sand that runs through the fingers, here and there cemented into soft beds.
For the vine. Sand drains quickly and warms up early, but the water store is small, so everything depends on clay or chalk in the subsoil; without that buffer stress sets in quickly in a dry summer. The vine roots deeply in it with ease. The soils contain little active lime, so chlorosis hardly plays a part, but they are poor and prone to erosion on slopes.
Forms the slopes of the Massif de Saint-Thierry north-west of Reims, around Châlons-sur-Vesle, Trigny and Hermonville; the sand pit at Châlons-sur-Vesle is the type locality.
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: e3cC, c5b.
brgm-bdcharm50 (4 September 2026)Sun and horizon
07:30
above the hill
19:10
behind the hill
11.7 h
sun at harvest
Grey: sun up, but behind the hill or the vineyard's own slope.
Around harvest the sun rises here at 07:30 above the hill and disappears at 19:10 behind the hill: 11.7 hours of direct sun on a clear day. The ridge reaches 6.9° above the horizon to the west-southwest.
| Irradiation | −0.7% versus flat land 976 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 sky | 99.8% 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
| rise | set | sun | day | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 June | 05:47 | 21:24 | 15.6 h | 16.2 h |
| 20 September | 07:30 | 19:10 | 11.7 h | 12.3 h |
| 21 December | 08:50 | 16:10 | 7.3 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), 38% of the far field is forest (BD Forêt), no buildings.
Air and cold
11 m
above the lowest point
drains away
cold air
a main drain
106.0 ha flows past
| Cold air | 11 m above the hollow, cold air drains awayign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Cold air passing through | 106.0 ha a main drain, mean over the polygon 3.38 haign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Planting
NNE-SSW
diagonal to the slope
1.20 m
between the rows
98%
vineyard in 1950
| Rows | NNE-SSW (19°) diagonal to the slope (54°), every 1.20 m, varies by plotmeasured over 3.1 of 3.2 ha plantedign-bdortho (6 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Vineyard in 1950 | 98% planted since: 0.08 haassessed over 3.2 ha on the 1950-1965 aerial photographign-photos-historiques-1950-1965 (6 September 2026) |
Climate over time
station REIMS-COURCY, 91 m, 15.1 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
- blanc
- white, almost always about the colour of the soil or of the rock coming through. Soil and stone · Terroirium, Eigen telling over de namen in deze atlas (2026)
- vigne
- vineyard, the ordinary word for planted ground. The most common element in this atlas, usually descriptive rather than distinguishing. Viticulture · 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
0.41 ha of 3.30 ha delimited is registered to a legal entity
- ALLOUCHERY COURLEUX SA12%
- private individuals or unknown88%
- 0.41 ha ALLOUCHERY COURLEUX SA SAS · other
Private individuals or unknown: 2.89 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 sous Belloy Premier Cru · 150 m
- Les Prés d'Écueil Premier Cru · 150 m
- Les Consins Premier Cru · 200 m
- Les Valliberts Premier Cru · 250 m
- Le Village Premier Cru · 300 m
- Les Croix de Bas Premier Cru · 300 m
- A-Mi-la Ville Premier Cru · 350 m
- Les Croix Premier Cru · 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.