Lieu-dit · Festigny
Au Dessous du Bois du Houx
Au Dessous du Bois du Houx is a lieu-dit in Festigny, Vallée de la Marne, Champagne, whose largest tier is champagne.
1.09 ha
delimited
173 m
elevation
9.1 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 | Festigny |
| Region | Vallée de la Marne, Champagne |
| Delimited | 1.09 hainao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (not in this commune) · cadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) |
| Planted | 0.93 hacadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) · ign-bdtopo-vigne (4 September 2026) · ign-rpg-2024 (5 September 2026) |
| Parcels | 11 |
| Grape variety | meunier 80 %, chardonnay 14 %, pinot noir 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 | 0%agence-bio-cartobio (c. 5 September 2026) · agence-bio-operateurs (5 September 2026) |
Place in the village
Among the 40 named plots ranked champagne in Festigny, from high to low:
Position
173 m
elevation
20.6%
very steep
WNW
west-northwest
upper
even slope
| Elevation | 173 m 168 to 181 mign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Daytime temperature | −0.11 °C by day, relative to the village centre at 151 m, ± 0.06 °Cmeteo-france-quotidiennes (18 September 2026) · meteo-france-postes (6 September 2026) · meteo-france-lsh (6 September 2026) · ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| Slope | 20.6% 11.6°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| Aspect | west-northwest 289°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| On the slope | 53% upper slope, on an even plane, 554 m drains onto itign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Bedrock
- 16%Saint-Ouen marl and limestone 38.5–37.7 million years
- 84%Lutetian limestone and caillasses 48–41 million years
Not a borehole: ordered by age, thickness by share of surface.
In the glass. This unit belongs to the Tertiary fill of the Paris Basin and lies far from Jurassic viticulture. Beyond the rule of thumb that shallow, quickly drying soils often give early-ripening grapes and taut wine we get no further here, and that effect runs through soil depth and water, not through the limestone itself. (weak indication)
Limestone of the Paris Basin, formed in a warm, shallow sea full of shellfish and nummulites. Upwards it passes into lagoonal marl with hard, siliceous limestone lumps, the caillasses, locally with gypsum and dolomite. Middle Eocene, Lutetian, roughly 48 to 41 million years old.
For the vine. The hard limestone beds carry a thin, stony topsoil that dries out quickly and warms up quickly, while the marly interlayers retain moisture; over short distances the picture can vary sharply. Roots have to follow cracks and fissures, because the beds themselves are dense. The soils are very rich in lime, so chlorosis is a real risk in the thinnest spots.
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: e5b, e6b.
brgm-bdcharm50 (4 September 2026)Sun and horizon
10:14
above the hill
19:21
behind the hill
9.1 h
sun at harvest
1.9 h
lost to the hill
Grey: sun up, behind the hill or its own slope.
Around harvest the sun rises here at 10:14 above the hill and disappears at 19:21 behind the hill: 9.1 hours of direct sun on a clear day. The ridge reaches 26.2° above the horizon to the east-southeast. The relief costs 2.0% of the irradiation from April to October, direct and diffuse together.
| Irradiation | −5.1% versus flat land 928 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 | 96.9% 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, the caveat
| rise | set | sun | day | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 June | 08:32 | 21:26 | 12.9 h | 16.2 h |
| 20 September | 10:14 | 19:21 | 9.1 h | 12.3 h |
| 21 December | 11:44 | 16:06 | 4.4 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), 47% 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
41 m
above the lowest point
drains far away
cold air
little inflow
1.7 ha flows past
| Cold air | 41 m high on the slope, cold air drains far awayign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Cold air passing through | 1.7 ha little inflow, mean over the polygon 0.34 haign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Planting
ESE-WNW
down the slope
1.40 m
between the rows
86%
vineyard in 1950
| Rows | ESE-WNW (102°) down the slope (7°), every 1.40 m, varies by plotmeasured over 0.8 of 0.9 ha plantedign-bdortho (6 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Vineyard in 1950 | 86% planted since: 0.13 ha, rows then ran 87° differentlyassessed over 0.9 ha on the 1950-1965 aerial photographign-photos-historiques-1950-1965 (6 September 2026) |
Climate over time
station CHAMBRECY-CIVC, 150 m, 16.6 km away
raw daily series, not corrected for station breaks
The name
- dessous
- below, lower than the thing named. Shape and position · Terroirium, Eigen telling over de namen in deze atlas (2026)
- bois
- wood, or ground bordering a wood. The third most common element in this atlas. Vegetation · 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
0.04 ha of 1.09 ha delimited is registered to a legal entity
- COMMUNE DE FESTIGNY3%
- private individuals or unknown97%
- 0.04 ha COMMUNE DE FESTIGNY COM · public
Private individuals or unknown: 1.05 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
- Le Haut des Longues Raies Champagne · 150 m
- Les Longues Raies Champagne · 200 m
- La Calvode Champagne · 400 m
- Le Clos de la Vesserie Champagne · 400 m
- La Tempête Champagne · 450 m
- La Vesserie Champagne · 600 m
- La Côte de la Chapelle Champagne · 600 m
- Le Vigneux Champagne · 700 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.