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Lieu-dit · Romanèche-Thorins

En Brennay

En Brennay is a lieu-dit in Romanèche-Thorins, Beaujolais in Saône-et-Loire, whose largest tier is village.

16.4 ha

delimited

222 m

elevation

11.8 h

sun at harvest

Open on the mapWith the boundary, the plots, the sun through the year and the bedrock.

In figures

LevelVillage 98%
Regional 2%inao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (c. 4 September 2026)
VillageRomanèche-Thorins
RegionBeaujolais in Saône-et-Loire
Delimited16.4 hainao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (c. 4 September 2026) · cadastre-etalab (4 September 2026)
Planted9.16 hacadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) · ign-bdtopo-vigne (5 September 2026) · ign-rpg-2024 (5 September 2026)
Parcels76
Grape varietygamay also permitted: aligoté, chardonnay, meloninao-cahiers-des-charges (7 September 2026) · dgddi-superficies-produits (7 September 2026) · franceagrimer-observatoire-viticulture (7 September 2026)
Organic4%agence-bio-cartobio (c. 5 September 2026) · agence-bio-operateurs (5 September 2026)

Place in the village

Among the 51 named plots ranked village in Romanèche-Thorins, from high to low:

sun at harvest 8th
elevation 15th
slope 9th
on the slope 14th

Position

222 m

elevation

8.5%

firm

SE

southeast

mid-slope

convex ridge

Elevation222 m 200 to 239 mign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)
Daytime temperature−0.05 °C not measurable: smaller than the uncertainty. by day, relative to the village centre at 215 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)
Slope8.5% 4.9°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)
Aspectsoutheast 130°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)
On the slope34% mid slope, on a convex ridge, 145 m drains onto itign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)

Bedrock

  • 100%Porphyritic monzogranite and quartz monzonite, Carboniferous about 350–⁠330 million years (Dinantien, inferred from the map, not radiometric)

In the glass. Tends towards fragrant, finely built wines with tannin that is supple rather than broad. In practice that picture comes at least as much from the shallow, poor soil and the exposure as from the rock itself.

Igneous rock that crystallised deep in the crust during the building of the Hercynian mountain chain, roughly 350 to 330 million years ago. Porphyritic means that centimetre-sized feldspar crystals sit in a finer groundmass, which gives the stone its mottled, pink to pale grey appearance. At the surface this rock weathers to a coarse-grained, crumbly sand known locally as gore or arène, with half-rotted rock beneath; the depth at which solid rock begins varies greatly, from a few decimetres to several metres.

For the vine. Lime-free and acid, so virtually no risk of chlorosis, but no lime buffer either. The arène is very free-draining and warms quickly, which favours early ripening, but holds little water, so the depth of the weathered layer determines whether the vineyard gets through a dry summer. On shallow, steep plots it dries out quickly; where weathering goes metres deep, the vine roots far down and the water supply is in fact remarkably regular.

Occurs in the granite knolls of the southern Mâconnais around Chasselas and Leynes. Which Beaujolais crus lie precisely on this unit cannot be established without a parcel map; the well-known pink granite of Fleurie and Moulin-à-Vent belongs to a younger massif.

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: h1-2pγ3.

brgm-bdcharm50 (4 September 2026)

Sun and horizon

07:31

above the hill

19:21

behind the crest of the slope

11.8 h

sun at harvest

Grey: sun up, behind the hill or its own slope.

Around harvest the sun rises here at 07:31 above the hill and disappears at 19:21 behind the crest of the slope: 11.8 hours of direct sun on a clear day. The ridge reaches 4.8° above the horizon to the northwest.

Irradiation+1.4% versus flat land 1,097 kWh/m² from April to October, 40% 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 sky99.8% 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
risesetsunday
21 June05:5521:0115.1 h15.8 h
20 September07:3119:2111.8 h12.3 h
21 December08:3316:338.0 h8.6 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), 21% of the far field is forest (BD Forêt), no buildings.

ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) · ign-lidarhd-mnh (6 September 2026) · ign-bdforet-v2 (5 September 2026)

Air and cold

20 m

above the lowest point

drains away

cold air

a main drain

445.4 ha flows past

Cold air20 m above the hollow, cold air drains awayign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)
Cold air passing through445.4 ha a main drain, mean over the polygon 7.62 haign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)

Planting

E-W

diagonal to the slope

1.05 m

between the rows

99%

vineyard in 1950

RowsE-W (99°) diagonal to the slope (30°), every 1.05 m, varies by plotmeasured over 8.5 of 9.2 ha plantedign-bdortho (5 September 2026)
Vineyard in 195099% abandoned since: 5.62 haassessed over 15.0 ha on the 1950-1965 aerial photographign-photos-historiques-1950-1965 (6 September 2026)

Climate over time

196019802000202014°16°18°20°

station MACON, 219 m, 12.3 km away

growing season, April to October: 1951-1980: 15.4 °C, 1991-2020: 17.1 °C

Huglin index: 1951-1980: 1,718, 1991-2020: 2,022

last spring frost: 1951-1980: day 96, 1991-2020: day 85

series homogenised through 2022

Who owns land here

8.39 ha of 16.4 ha delimited is registered to a legal entity

  • LES DOMAINES JEAN LORON8%
  • PREFABUR7%
  • GFA DES LOGIS6%
  • GFA HERITIERS MATHIEU RESILLOT6%
  • DOMAINE DE LA PIERRE6%
  • 10 other legal entities18%
  • private individuals or unknown49%
Show 3 more
  • 0.09 ha GROUPEMENT FONCIER VITICOLE DU MOULIN A VENT D'ANGES GFA · land company
  • 0.05 ha G5 PATRIMOINE SARL · other · bare ownership
  • 0.05 ha GANGAND SCEA · wine business · usufruct

Private individuals or unknown: 8.05 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

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.