Lieu-dit · Grauves
Les Hautes Gouttes d'Or
Les Hautes Gouttes d'Or is a lieu-dit in Grauves, Côte des Blancs, Champagne, whose largest tier is premier cru.
5.32 ha
delimited
181 m
elevation
10.7 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 | Grauves |
| Region | Côte des Blancs, Champagne |
| Delimited | 5.32 hainao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (not in this commune) · cadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) |
| Planted | 4.68 hacadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) · ign-bdtopo-vigne (4 September 2026) · ign-rpg-2024 (5 September 2026) |
| Parcels | 38 |
| Grape variety | chardonnay 95 %, meunier 5 % 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 52 named plots ranked premier cru in Grauves, from high to low:
Position
181 m
elevation
12.7%
steep
W
west
upper
even slope
| Elevation | 181 m 161 to 203 mign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Daytime temperature | −0.07 °C by day, relative to the village centre at 173 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 | 12.7% 7.2°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| Aspect | west 279°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| On the slope | 48% upper slope, on an even plane, 589 m drains onto itign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Bedrock
- 52%Undifferentiated slope deposits Kwartair, hoofdzakelijk Weichselien (niet gedateerd)
- 4%Lutetian limestone and caillasses 48–41 million years
- 32%Ypresian clay with lignite 56–53 million years
- 7%Ypresian sand, sandstone and conglomerate 56–48 million years
- 4%Campanian chalk with belemnites 78–72 million years
Not a borehole: ordered by age, thickness by share of surface.
In the glass. As a mixture this substrate says little in itself; origin, thickness and slope do the work. The wine can be expected to turn out fuller than on the bare subsoil next to it, but that has not been systematically established. (weak indication)
Not a rock but a collective name for material that slid down the slope through solifluction during the ice ages: a mixture of clay, silt, sand and stone rubble. The composition depends on what lies higher up; above chalk it is rich in lime and light in colour, below Tertiary sands and clays it is acidic and heavy instead. Solifluction itself is an ice-age process and is no longer active; what still moves today is surface wash and tillage erosion.
For the vine. This layer often lies on precisely the right slope positions and is deeper, looser and more fertile than the rock beneath it: more rootable ground, more water reserve, more vigour. The downside is that with a thick layer the root no longer reaches the parent rock, so the character of the subsoil drops out. Drainage is reasonable as long as the slope has enough gradient; on the flat foot of the slope the material stays cold and wet until late in spring.
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: SC, e4a, e4b, e5b, c5b.
brgm-bdcharm50 (4 September 2026)Sun and horizon
08:53
above the hill
19:36
behind the hill
10.7 h
sun at harvest
0.8 h
lost to the hill
Grey: sun up, behind the hill or its own slope.
Around harvest the sun rises here at 08:53 above the hill and disappears at 19:36 behind the hill: 10.7 hours of direct sun on a clear day. The ridge reaches 13.3° above the horizon to the east. The relief costs 0.5% of the irradiation from April to October, direct and diffuse together.
| Irradiation | −1.7% versus flat land 987 kWh/m² from April to October, 46% 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 | 98.4% 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 | 07:11 | 21:32 | 14.3 h | 16.2 h |
| 20 September | 08:53 | 19:36 | 10.7 h | 12.3 h |
| 21 December | 10:11 | 16:27 | 6.3 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), 37% 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
36 m
above the lowest point
drains far away
cold air
a main drain
71.1 ha flows past
| Cold air | 36 m high on the slope, cold air drains far awayign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Cold air passing through | 71.1 ha a main drain, mean over the polygon 0.48 haign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Planting
N-S
across the slope
1.18 m
between the rows
100%
vineyard in 1950
| Rows | N-S (174°) across the slope (75°), every 1.18 m, varies by plotmeasured over 4.1 of 4.7 ha plantedign-bdortho (6 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Vineyard in 1950 | 100%assessed over 5.0 ha on the 1950-1965 aerial photographign-photos-historiques-1950-1965 (6 September 2026) |
Climate over time
station MAILLY-CIVC, 182 m, 23.4 km away
raw daily series, not corrected for station breaks
The name
- 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)
- goutte
- a small stream or a spot where water seeps out. Les Gouttes d'Or owes its name to this and not to gold. Water · Gérard Taverdet, Noms de lieux de Bourgogne (2007)
- or
- gold, as praise or as a reference to the colour at sunset. In Cote d'Or it is also read as a shortening of orient; that reading is uncertain. Shape and position · Gérard Taverdet, Noms de lieux de Bourgogne (2007)
This is about the words, not about this plot: the same name can have arisen differently elsewhere.
Who owns land here
0.06 ha of 5.32 ha delimited is registered to a legal entity
- FINANCIERE GL<1%
- MAISON LHEUREUX<1%
- CHAMPAGNE BOLLINGER<1%
- private individuals or unknown99%
- 0.02 ha FINANCIERE GL SAS · other · bare ownership
- 0.02 ha MAISON LHEUREUX SAS · wine business · usufruct
- 0.01 ha CHAMPAGNE BOLLINGER SA · wine business · organic
Private individuals or unknown: 5.26 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 Gouttes d'Or Premier Cru · 150 m
- Les Vaux Premier Cru · 350 m
- Le Darcy Premier Cru · 350 m
- Les Forêts Premier Cru · 400 m
- Henriette Premier Cru · 400 m
- Montabor Premier Cru · 550 m
- Les Bas Boquets Premier Cru · 650 m
- Les Grillots Premier Cru · 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.