Lieu-dit · Fontenay-près-Chablis
Vallée des Grands Bois
Vallée des Grands Bois is a lieu-dit in Fontenay-près-Chablis, Chablis en Grand Auxerrois, Burgundy, whose largest tier is village.
3.06 ha
delimited
186 m
elevation
10.8 h
sun at harvest
Open on the mapWith the boundary, the plots, the sun through the year and the bedrock.
In figures
| Level | Villageinao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (c. 4 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Village | Fontenay-près-Chablis |
| Region | Chablis en Grand Auxerrois, Burgundy |
| Delimited | 3.06 hainao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (c. 4 September 2026) · cadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) |
| Planted | 1.26 hacadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) · ign-bdtopo-vigne (5 September 2026) · ign-rpg-2024 (5 September 2026) |
| Parcels | 10 |
| Grape variety | chardonnayinao-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 21 named plots ranked village in Fontenay-près-Chablis, from high to low:
Position
186 m
elevation
21.1%
very steep
NNW
north-northwest
mid-slope
concave fold
| Elevation | 186 m 170 to 217 mign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Daytime temperature | +0.17 °C by day, relative to the village centre at 217 m, ± 0.02 °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 | 21.1% 11.9°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| Aspect | north-northwest 339°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| On the slope | 33% mid slope, in a concave hollow, 316 m drains onto itign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Bedrock
- 76%Kimmeridgian limestone and marl 152–149 million years
- 24%Barrois limestone and underlying Kimmeridgian beds (j7b to j9) about 155–143 million years
Not a borehole: ordered by age, thickness by share of surface.
In the glass. Tends towards linear, slightly saline white wine with firm acidity. In Chablis that picture cannot be separated from climate, aspect and élevage, so read it as a tendency and not as a rule.
A rhythmic alternation of grey-blue marl and hard limestone beds, deposited in a shallow, warm sea during the middle and upper Kimmeridgian. The ratio of limestone beds to marl differs from bed to bed and from sector to sector; in the Chablisien the sequence is several tens of metres to well over a hundred metres thick. The decree of 1938 set the Chablis boundary at the Kimmeridgian, recognisable by the small comma-shaped oyster Nanogyra virgula, but that criterion proved untenable: Petit Chablis was added in 1943 and the area was enlarged in 1956.
For the vine. The marl retains water and the limestone beds let surplus water through, which makes the substrate relatively balanced in wet and dry years alike. Where the marl is not compacted, rooting can go reasonably deep; how the vine responds in summer, however, depends more on soil depth and water regime than on the rock itself. The active lime content is high, so chlorosis remains a real risk and the choice of rootstock matters.
Characteristic of Chablis, from the grands crus on the right bank of the Serein to the premiers crus, and of the Tonnerrois and parts of the Auxerrois.
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: j8, j7b-j9.
brgm-bdcharm50 (4 September 2026)Sun and horizon
08:14
above the hill
19:03
behind the hill
10.8 h
sun at harvest
0.9 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 08:14 above the hill and disappears at 19:03 behind the hill: 10.8 hours of direct sun on a clear day. The ridge reaches 16.2° above the horizon to the south. The relief costs 1.1% of the irradiation from April to October, direct and diffuse together.
| Irradiation | −8.2% versus flat land 927 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 | 96.8% 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 | 07:14 | 21:03 | 13.8 h | 16.0 h |
| 20 September | 08:14 | 19:03 | 10.8 h | 12.3 h |
| 21 December | 10:14 | 14:40 | 4.4 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), 25% 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
19 m
above the lowest point
drains away
cold air
a main drain
94.9 ha flows past
| Cold air | 19 m above the hollow, cold air drains awayign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Cold air passing through | 94.9 ha a main drain, mean over the polygon 6.07 haign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Planting
NE-SW
diagonal to the slope
1.00 m
between the rows
82%
vineyard in 1950
| Rows | NE-SW (36°) diagonal to the slope (57°), every 1.00 m, all rows parallelmeasured over 1.2 of 1.3 ha plantedign-bdortho (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Vineyard in 1950 | 82% abandoned since: 0.42 haassessed over 2.2 ha on the 1950-1965 aerial photographign-photos-historiques-1950-1965 (6 September 2026) |
Climate over time
station CHABLIS_SAPC, 141 m, 2.9 km away
raw daily series, not corrected for station breaks
The name
- 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)
- grand
- large, usually relative to a smaller plot with the same name. 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
0.27 ha of 3.06 ha delimited is registered to a legal entity
- GAEC DU CLEON9%
- private individuals or unknown91%
- 0.27 ha GAEC DU CLEON GAEC · wine business
Private individuals or unknown: 2.80 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 Coupilles Village · 150 m
- Vallée du Grand Bois Village · 250 m
- Gratte Poule Village · 350 m
- Sur l'Etang Village · 350 m
- Les Epalottes Village · 450 m
- Garenne de Moreau Village · 500 m
- La Vallée de Mignotte Village · 550 m
- Dine Chien Village · 600 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.