Lieu-dit · Gyé-sur-Seine
Les Craies
Les Craies is a lieu-dit in Gyé-sur-Seine, Côte des Bar, Champagne, whose largest tier is champagne.
8.98 ha
delimited
270 m
elevation
11.2 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 | Gyé-sur-Seine |
| Region | Côte des Bar, Champagne |
| Delimited | 8.98 hainao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (not in this commune) · cadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) |
| Planted | 7.94 hacadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) · ign-bdtopo-vigne (4 September 2026) · ign-rpg-2024 (5 September 2026) |
| Parcels | 21 |
| Grape variety | pinot noir 91 %, chardonnay 7 % 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 30 named plots ranked champagne in Gyé-sur-Seine, from high to low:
Position
270 m
elevation
8.8%
firm
E
east
upper
even slope
| Elevation | 270 m 251 to 289 mign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Daytime temperature | ±0.00 °C not measurable: smaller than the uncertainty. by day, relative to the village centre at 269 m, ± 0.03 °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 | 8.8% 5.0°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| Aspect | east 87°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| On the slope | 58% upper slope, on an even plane, 186 m drains onto itign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Bedrock
- 51%Lower Kimmeridgian limestone with Astarte 155–152 million years
- 49%Kimmeridgian marl and limestone 155–149 million years
Not a borehole: ordered by age, thickness by share of surface.
In the glass. In the Chablisien this bed mainly forms the lower slopes and valley floors; the crus lie higher up, on the Kimmeridgian marls. From the map colour alone no wine style can be attached here. (weak indication)
Hard, beige micritic limestone in decimetre-thick beds with a dark weathering skin, generally a few metres to well over ten metres thick and varying by area. It formed in a shallow, warm sea full of small bivalves of the genus Astarte, in the early Kimmeridgian, roughly 155 to 152 million years ago. At the surface it breaks into angular blocks, hence the French description rocailleux.
For the vine. Hard limestone gives a shallow, stony soil that drains excellently and in which roots mainly follow cracks and fissures. The stones at the surface keep the ground dry, but the water store is small, so a thin blanket of marl or colluvium on top often makes the difference. The active lime content of the soil is generally high, and the formation only works well on a slope.
Forms the valley floors and lower slopes in the Chablisien and Tonnerrois; also occurs in the Aube, with a distribution that differs from valley to valley.
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: j6aC, j6b-cN.
brgm-bdcharm50 (4 September 2026)Sun and horizon
07:49
above the hill
19:00
behind the hill
11.2 h
sun at harvest
0.6 h
lost to the hill
Grey: sun up, behind the hill or its own slope.
Around harvest the sun rises here at 07:49 above the hill and disappears at 19:00 behind the hill: 11.2 hours of direct sun on a clear day. The ridge reaches 7.6° above the horizon to the west.
| Irradiation | −0.5% versus flat land 978 kWh/m² from April to October, 47% 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 | 99.5% 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 | 05:56 | 20:52 | 14.9 h | 16.0 h |
| 20 September | 07:49 | 19:00 | 11.2 h | 12.3 h |
| 21 December | 09:06 | 16:19 | 7.2 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), 50% of the far field is forest (BD Forêt), no buildings.
Air and cold
36 m
above the lowest point
drains far away
cold air
a gully
2.3 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 | 2.3 ha a gully, mean over the polygon 0.12 haign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Planting
E-W
down the slope
1.34 m
between the rows
100%
vineyard in 1950
| Rows | E-W (100°) down the slope (14°), every 1.34 m, varies by plotmeasured over 7.9 of 7.9 ha plantedign-bdortho (6 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Vineyard in 1950 | 100% rows then ran 23° differentlyassessed over 5.6 ha on the 1950-1965 aerial photographign-photos-historiques-1950-1965 (6 September 2026) |
Climate over time
station CHATILLON/SEINE, 262 m, 22.2 km away
growing season, April to October: 1951-1980: 13.6 °C, 1991-2020: 15.0 °C
Huglin index: 1951-1980: 1,453, 1991-2020: 1,716
last spring frost: 1951-1980: day 128, 1991-2020: day 124
series homogenised through 2022
Who owns land here
1.63 ha of 8.98 ha delimited is registered to a legal entity
- GFV DE LA DOUY12%
- SARL FRANCOIS DAUMALE6%
- COMMUNE DE GYE-SUR-SEINE1%
- private individuals or unknown82%
- 1.07 ha GFV DE LA DOUY GFA · land company
- 0.52 ha SARL FRANCOIS DAUMALE SAS · other
- 0.05 ha COMMUNE DE GYE-SUR-SEINE COM · public
Private individuals or unknown: 7.35 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.
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.