Lieu-dit · Mellecey
Le Croteau
Le Croteau is a lieu-dit in Mellecey, Côte Chalonnaise, Burgundy, whose largest tier is regional.
3.80 ha
delimited
239 m
elevation
9.9 h
sun at harvest
Open on the mapWith the boundary, the plots, the sun through the year and the bedrock.
In figures
| Level | Regionalinao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (c. 4 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Village | Mellecey |
| Region | Côte Chalonnaise, Burgundy |
| Delimited | 3.80 hainao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (c. 4 September 2026) · cadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) |
| Planted | 2.85 hacadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) · ign-bdtopo-vigne (5 September 2026) · ign-rpg-2024 (5 September 2026) |
| Parcels | 28 |
| Grape variety | pinot noir / chardonnay also permitted: pinot blanc, pinot grisinao-cahiers-des-charges (7 September 2026) · dgddi-superficies-produits (7 September 2026) · franceagrimer-observatoire-viticulture (7 September 2026) |
| Organic | 34%agence-bio-cartobio (c. 5 September 2026) · agence-bio-operateurs (5 September 2026) |
Place in the village
Among the 38 named plots ranked regional in Mellecey, from high to low:
Position
239 m
elevation
11.6%
firm
NW
northwest
mid-slope
concave fold
| Elevation | 239 m 230 to 259 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 238 m, ± 0.01 °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 | 11.6% 6.6°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| Aspect | northwest 321°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| On the slope | 23% mid slope, in a concave hollow, 174 m drains onto itign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Bedrock
- 55%Colluvium, mixed slope deposit about 0.1–0 million years
- 41%Oolitic limestone, marl and chailles (late Bathonian to Callovian) 165.5–161.5 million years
- 4%Lower Bajocian crinoidal limestone 170.9–169.3 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, j3c-4, j2a.
brgm-bdcharm50 (4 September 2026)Sun and horizon
09:08
above the hill
19:05
behind the hill
9.9 h
sun at harvest
1.9 h
lost to the hill
Grey: sun up, behind the hill or its own slope.
Around harvest the sun rises here at 09:08 above the hill and disappears at 19:05 behind the hill: 9.9 hours of direct sun on a clear day. The ridge reaches 18.5° above the horizon to the southeast. The relief costs 0.7% of the irradiation from April to October, direct and diffuse together.
| Irradiation | −3.8% versus flat land 1,014 kWh/m² from April to October, 43% 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 | 98.1% 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 | 21:16 | 14.4 h | 15.9 h |
| 20 September | 09:08 | 19:05 | 9.9 h | 12.3 h |
| 21 December | 11:18 | 16:11 | 4.9 h | 8.5 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), 30% 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
14 m
above the lowest point
drains away
cold air
a combe
24.9 ha flows past
| Cold air | 14 m above the hollow, cold air drains awayign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Cold air passing through | 24.9 ha a combe, mean over the polygon 1.34 haign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Planting
SE-NW
down the slope
1.03 m
between the rows
58%
vineyard in 1950
| Rows | SE-NW (128°) down the slope (13°), every 1.03 m, all rows parallelmeasured over 2.8 of 2.8 ha plantedign-bdortho (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Vineyard in 1950 | 58% abandoned since: 0.35 ha, planted since: 1.29 haassessed over 3.4 ha on the 1950-1965 aerial photographign-photos-historiques-1950-1965 (6 September 2026) |
Climate over time
station LA ROCHEPOT, 417 m, 16.8 km away
growing season, April to October: 1951-1980: 14.1 °C, 1991-2020: 15.2 °C
Huglin index: 1951-1980: 1,528, 1991-2020: 1,726
last spring frost: 1951-1980: day 115, 1991-2020: day 108
raw daily series, not corrected for station breaks
Who owns land here
2.43 ha of 3.80 ha delimited is registered to a legal entity
- SCEA DE LA MONETTE36%
- CHATEAU DE GARNEROT28%
- private individuals or unknown36%
- 1.35 ha SCEA DE LA MONETTE SCEA · wine business
- 1.08 ha CHATEAU DE GARNEROT GFA · land company · organic
Private individuals or unknown: 1.36 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
- Lès Sillons Regional · 150 m
- En Grapigny Regional · 250 m
- Lès Pitoux Regional · 300 m
- Champ Coulon Regional · 400 m
- Le Chêne Viat Regional · 450 m
- Champ Gevriat Regional · 550 m
- Lès Moichains Regional · 600 m
- Lès Vignes Saint Pierre Regional · 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.