Lieu-dit · Hautvillers
Les Sablons
Les Sablons is a lieu-dit in Hautvillers, Vallée de la Marne, Champagne, whose largest tier is premier cru.
3.18 ha
delimited
200 m
elevation
11.1 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 | Hautvillers |
| Region | Vallée de la Marne, Champagne |
| Delimited | 3.18 hainao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (not in this commune) · cadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) |
| Planted | 3.00 hacadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) · ign-bdtopo-vigne (4 September 2026) · ign-rpg-2024 (5 September 2026) |
| Parcels | 104 |
| Grape variety | pinot noir 41 %, chardonnay 32 %, meunier 27 % 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 | 2%agence-bio-cartobio (c. 5 September 2026) · agence-bio-operateurs (5 September 2026) |
Place in the village
Among the 88 named plots ranked premier cru in Hautvillers, from high to low:
Position
200 m
elevation
13.0%
steep
SSE
south-southeast
upper
convex ridge
| Elevation | 200 m 193 to 210 mign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Slope | 13.0% 7.4°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| Aspect | south-southeast 154°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| On the slope | 66% upper slope, on a convex ridge, 412 m drains onto itign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Bedrock
- 62%Lutetian sand and Tuffeau de Damery 48–41 million years
- 38%Ypresian sand, sandstone and conglomerate 56–48 million years
Not a borehole: ordered by age, thickness by share of surface.
In the glass. The light, quickly warming soil gives earlier ripening, which usually produces suppler wine. Aspect, soil depth and the high share of Meunier weigh more heavily here than the type of stone itself.
An alternation of loose sand and soft, sandy shelly limestone from the Middle Eocene, roughly 48 to 41 million years ago. The Tuffeau de Damery is a light, porous stone full of shells from a warm sea, deposited in a high-energy environment at some distance from the coast; it is known from Fleury-la-Rivière. In the ground this yields a light, granular mixture of sand and crumbly limestone.
For the vine. Light, warm soils that warm up quickly in spring and drain well, with a moderate water store that can become tight in a dry summer. The stone is soft enough to let roots through, so the vine gets deeper than the soil thickness would suggest. The soils are rich enough in lime for some risk of chlorosis, and on steep sections erosion is a point of attention.
Characteristic of the Vallée de la Marne around Damery, Cumières and Fleury-la-Rivière.
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: e5a, e4b.
brgm-bdcharm50 (4 September 2026)Sun and horizon
07:54
above the hill
18:58
behind the hill
11.1 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 07:54 above the hill and disappears at 18:58 behind the hill: 11.1 hours of direct sun on a clear day. The ridge reaches 15.0° above the horizon to the north-northwest.
| Irradiation | +2.6% versus flat land 1,017 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 | 99.0% 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 | 06:45 | 20:25 | 13.7 h | 16.2 h |
| 20 September | 07:54 | 18:58 | 11.1 h | 12.3 h |
| 21 December | 08:37 | 16:34 | 8.0 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), 46% of the far field is forest (BD Forêt), no buildings.
Air and cold
32 m
above the lowest point
drains far away
cold air
a combe
41.3 ha flows past
| Cold air | 32 m high on the slope, cold air drains far awayign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Cold air passing through | 41.3 ha a combe, mean over the polygon 0.95 haign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Planting
N-S
down the slope
1.31 m
between the rows
100%
vineyard in 1950
| Rows | N-S (170°) down the slope (17°), every 1.31 m, all rows parallelmeasured over 1.7 of 3.0 ha plantedign-bdortho (6 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Vineyard in 1950 | 100%assessed over 1.8 ha on the 1950-1965 aerial photographign-photos-historiques-1950-1965 (6 September 2026) |
Climate over time
station CHAMBRECY-CIVC, 150 m, 14.6 km away
raw daily series, not corrected for station breaks
The name
- sablon
- sandy ground or a sand pit. Soil and stone · 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
0.52 ha of 3.18 ha delimited is registered to a legal entity
- CLOS SAINTE HELENE10%
- MAURICE DELABAYE ET FILS4%
- LES VIGNES BLANCHES2%
- COMMUNE DE HAUTVILLERS1%
- GHISLAIN TRIBAUT ET FILS<1%
- private individuals or unknown84%
- 0.33 ha CLOS SAINTE HELENE GFA · land company
- 0.11 ha MAURICE DELABAYE ET FILS SARL · other
- 0.05 ha LES VIGNES BLANCHES GFA · land company
- 0.02 ha COMMUNE DE HAUTVILLERS COM · public
- 0.01 ha FONCIERE TRIBAUT SCI · land company · bare ownership
Private individuals or unknown: 2.66 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 Fond des Noëls Premier Cru · 100 m
- Au-Dessous des Sablons Premier Cru · 200 m
- La Crapaudière Premier Cru · 250 m
- Les Noëls Nord Premier Cru · 300 m
- Les Noëls Premier Cru · 400 m
- Les Noëls Crémonts Premier Cru · 500 m
- Les Panattes Premier Cru · 600 m
- Les Crémonts Premier Cru · 650 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.