Lieu-dit · Saint-Albain
Les Molards
Les Molards is a lieu-dit in Saint-Albain, Mâconnais, Burgundy, whose largest tier is regional.
18.1 ha
delimited
204 m
elevation
11.7 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 | Saint-Albain |
| Region | Mâconnais, Burgundy |
| Delimited | 18.1 hainao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (c. 4 September 2026) · cadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) |
| Planted | 5.81 hacadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) · ign-bdtopo-vigne (5 September 2026) · ign-rpg-2024 (5 September 2026) |
| Parcels | 36 |
| Grape variety | aligoté, chardonnay, melon, pinot blanc, pinot gris, gamay, pinot noir, césar also permitted: aligoté, chardonnay, gamay de bouze, gamay de chaudenay, melon, pinot blanc, pinot grisinao-cahiers-des-charges (7 September 2026) · dgddi-superficies-produits (7 September 2026) · franceagrimer-observatoire-viticulture (7 September 2026) |
| Organic | 11%agence-bio-cartobio (c. 5 September 2026) · agence-bio-operateurs (5 September 2026) |
Place in the village
Among the 7 named plots ranked regional in Saint-Albain, from high to low:
Position
204 m
elevation
7.1%
firm
E
east
mid-slope
convex ridge
| Elevation | 204 m 180 to 212 mign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Daytime temperature | +0.11 °C by day, relative to the village centre at 219 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 | 7.1% 4.0°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| Aspect | east 83°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| On the slope | 41% mid slope, on a convex ridge, 167 m drains onto itign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Bedrock
- 44%Heterogeneous slope deposits (colluvium and scree) jonger dan circa 0,13 (laat-Pleistoceen tot Holoceen)
- 41%Lithographic limestone, Lower Kimmeridgian 155–152 million years
- 15%Nantoux limestone and Mercurey marl 157–155 million years
Not a borehole: ordered by age, thickness by share of surface.
In the glass. Many classified plots of the Côte actually root in colluvium and not in the rock the map shows beneath them. That makes this code important for viticulture and geologically uninformative, because what it gives depends on the mixture, the thickness and the slope.
This is not a rock but a mixture of stones, gravel, loam and clay that has slid, crept and washed down the slope, largely during the cold phases of the last ice ages. What it contains depends entirely on what outcrops higher up the slope, so the character can change over a few tens of metres. Largely late Pleistocene to Holocene, younger than about 130,000 years, with the bulk from the last ice age and still slowly moving on steep slopes.
For the vine. Physically this is often a favourable rooting environment: loose, airy, well drained thanks to the stone fraction, with enough fine material to hold moisture. Exactly how favourable depends on the thickness, which varies from a few decimetres to well over a metre and determines the water reserve more than the rock beneath does. A stony top layer warms strongly during the day and at the same time curbs evaporation, so the soil beneath stays moist longer than a bare soil.
Large parts of the slopes of the Côte lie on such deposits, above the rock shown on the map. Slope scree also occurs on the slopes of Chablis, although its extent there is less well documented.
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: Ch, j6b, j5c.
brgm-bdcharm50 (4 September 2026)Sun and horizon
07:37
above the hill
19:18
behind the crest of the slope
11.7 h
sun at harvest
Grey: sun up, behind the hill or its own slope.
Around harvest the sun rises here at 07:37 above the hill and disappears at 19:18 behind the crest of the slope: 11.7 hours of direct sun on a clear day. The ridge reaches 3.5° above the horizon to the west-southwest.
| Irradiation | −0.5% versus flat land 1,065 kWh/m² from April to October, 41% 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 | 99.8% 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
| rise | set | sun | day | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 June | 06:04 | 21:13 | 15.2 h | 15.8 h |
| 20 September | 07:37 | 19:18 | 11.7 h | 12.3 h |
| 21 December | 08:41 | 16:30 | 7.8 h | 8.6 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), 29% of the far field is forest (BD Forêt), no buildings.
Air and cold
30 m
above the lowest point
drains far away
cold air
a combe
22.4 ha flows past
| Cold air | 30 m high on the slope, cold air drains far awayign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Cold air passing through | 22.4 ha a combe, mean over the polygon 0.22 haign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Planting
ESE-WNW
down the slope
1.33 m
between the rows
95%
vineyard in 1950
| Rows | ESE-WNW (109°) down the slope (25°), every 1.33 m, varies by plotmeasured over 6.0 of 5.8 ha plantedign-bdortho (6 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Vineyard in 1950 | 95% abandoned since: 9.53 haassessed over 17.0 ha on the 1950-1965 aerial photographign-photos-historiques-1950-1965 (6 September 2026) |
Climate over time
station MACON, 219 m, 15.2 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
The name
- molard
- a rounded hill, from Latin mola for millstone. Relief · 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
2.09 ha of 18.1 ha delimited is registered to a legal entity
- RURAL DE LA FUTAIE11%
- COMMUNE DE SAINT ALBAIN1%
- private individuals or unknown88%
- 1.99 ha GFA DU QUART PICHET GFA · land company
- 0.10 ha COMMUNE DE SAINT ALBAIN COM · public
Private individuals or unknown: 16.0 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
- La Garenne Regional · 400 m
- Sous Saint-Pancras Regional · 1.0 km
- Prés de Marenge Regional · 1.0 km
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.