Lieu-dit · Le Breuil
Les Graviers
Les Graviers is a lieu-dit in Le Breuil, Vallée de la Marne, Champagne, whose largest tier is champagne.
11.7 ha
delimited
159 m
elevation
11.6 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 | Le Breuil |
| Region | Vallée de la Marne, Champagne |
| Delimited | 11.7 hainao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (not in this commune) · cadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) |
| Planted | 11.2 hacadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) · ign-bdtopo-vigne (4 September 2026) · ign-rpg-2024 (5 September 2026) |
| Parcels | 48 |
| Grape variety | meunier 85 %, pinot noir 10 %, chardonnay 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 52 named plots ranked champagne in Le Breuil, from high to low:
Position
159 m
elevation
13.9%
steep
SSW
south-southwest
mid-slope
concave fold
| Elevation | 159 m 139 to 184 mign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Daytime temperature | +0.06 °C by day, relative to the village centre at 171 m, ± 0.04 °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 | 13.9% 7.9°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| Aspect | south-southwest 208°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| On the slope | 41% mid slope, in a concave hollow, 449 m drains onto itign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Bedrock
- 61%Colluvium, mixed slope deposit about 0.1–0 million years
- 16%Saint-Ouen marl and limestone 38.5–37.7 million years
- 23%Lutetian limestone and caillasses 48–41 million years
Not a borehole: ordered by age, thickness by share of surface.
In the glass. As a group, colluvium says little about flavour on its own. In practice the rounder, earlier-approachable wines often sit on the thicker colluvial fans, while tension and ageing potential are more closely tied to slope, soil depth and vine age. (weak indication)
Not a true formation but a collective name for material that has come down from higher up the slope: limestone scree, lumps of marl, clay and loess, worked together by gravity, frost and rainwater. Most of it was deposited during and after the last ice ages, roughly the past hundred thousand years, and the process is still going on. What exactly is in the ground depends entirely on what lies upslope, so the same map colour can mean something slightly different from village to village.
For the vine. Usually loose, stony and deep, so the roots can go far and surplus water drains away quickly. Thanks to the fine material between the stones, colluvium generally holds more moisture in a dry summer than the thin soil on the bare rock above. At the bottom of the slope the deposit becomes thicker and finer, and because of the low position it is cooler and wetter there; where it contains a lot of limestone scree the active lime content can run high.
Characteristic of the mid and lower slopes of the whole Côte d'Or, including the scree fans at the mouths of the combes, as at Gevrey-Chambertin below the Combe Lavaux.
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: C, e5b, e6b.
brgm-bdcharm50 (4 September 2026)Sun and horizon
08:05
above the hill
19:43
behind the hill
11.6 h
sun at harvest
Grey: sun up, behind the hill or its own slope.
Around harvest the sun rises here at 08:05 above the hill and disappears at 19:43 behind the hill: 11.6 hours of direct sun on a clear day. The ridge reaches 11.6° above the horizon to the north-northeast.
| Irradiation | +2.9% versus flat land 1,014 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 | 99.5% 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 | 06:49 | 21:29 | 14.7 h | 16.2 h |
| 20 September | 08:05 | 19:43 | 11.6 h | 12.3 h |
| 21 December | 08:44 | 16:33 | 7.8 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), 38% of the far field is forest (BD Forêt), no buildings.
Air and cold
28 m
above the lowest point
drains far away
cold air
a combe
48.3 ha flows past
| Cold air | 28 m high on the slope, cold air drains far awayign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Cold air passing through | 48.3 ha a combe, mean over the polygon 1.42 haign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Planting
NNE-SSW
down the slope
1.16 m
between the rows
100%
vineyard in 1950
| Rows | NNE-SSW (23°) down the slope (5°), every 1.16 m, all rows parallelmeasured over 11.1 of 11.2 ha plantedign-bdortho (6 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Vineyard in 1950 | 100%assessed over 11.5 ha on the 1950-1965 aerial photographign-photos-historiques-1950-1965 (6 September 2026) |
Climate over time
station BLESMES, 222 m, 13.8 km away
raw daily series, not corrected for station breaks
Who owns land here
0.20 ha of 11.7 ha delimited is registered to a legal entity
- GFA DES VIGNETTES2%
- private individuals or unknown98%
- 0.20 ha GFA DES VIGNETTES GFA · land company
Private individuals or unknown: 11.5 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 Sansonnes Champagne · 150 m
- Les Clos des Graviers Champagne · 200 m
- Les Bayardes Champagne · 250 m
- Haut des Sansonnes Champagne · 250 m
- Le Gamet Champagne · 250 m
- Les Guissières Champagne · 350 m
- La Brousse Champagne · 350 m
- Vignes des Luyas Champagne · 350 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.