Lieu-dit · Saint-Denis-de-Vaux
Les Petites Varennes
Les Petites Varennes is a lieu-dit in Saint-Denis-de-Vaux, Côte Chalonnaise, Burgundy, whose largest tier is regional.
7.55 ha
delimited
268 m
elevation
10.8 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-Denis-de-Vaux |
| Region | Côte Chalonnaise, Burgundy |
| Delimited | 7.55 hainao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (c. 4 September 2026) · cadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) |
| Planted | 0.69 hacadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) · ign-bdtopo-vigne (5 September 2026) · ign-rpg-2024 (5 September 2026) |
| Parcels | 56 |
| Grape variety | pinot noir, gamay also permitted: chardonnay, 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 22 named plots ranked regional in Saint-Denis-de-Vaux, from high to low:
Position
268 m
elevation
11.8%
firm
NNW
north-northwest
foot
even slope
| Elevation | 268 m 257 to 284 mign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Daytime temperature | +0.11 °C by day, relative to the village centre at 282 m, ± 0.02 °Cmeteo-france-quotidiennes (6 September 2026) · meteo-france-postes (6 September 2026) · meteo-france-lsh (6 September 2026) · ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| Slope | 11.8% 6.7°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| Aspect | north-northwest 336°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| On the slope | 19% foot of the slope, on an even plane, 230 m drains onto itign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Bedrock
- 25%Alluvium and colluvium of valley floors and footslopes circa 0,12 tot heden
- 5%Sinemurian limestone with Gryphaea 199–187 million years
- 54%Variegated Triassic clay with gypsum 237–201 million years
- 16%Greenish Triassic sandstone and dolomite about 252–237 million years
Not a borehole: ordered by age, thickness by share of surface.
In the glass. Tends towards broader, firmer and somewhat earthier red with more substance in the middle, generally less finely drawn than on limestone. The spread is wide, because plots on the Trias differ greatly in clay content and depth.
Red, green and grey clays with beds of gypsum and beige dolomite, deposited in the Upper Triassic (Keuper). The landscape at the time was a flat coast of lagoons and salt pans that repeatedly dried out, hence the gypsum and the dolomite. In the field it is a thick, soft sequence whose thickness varies greatly from sector to sector and which forms a grassy lower slope beneath the hard limestone edge of the Lias.
For the vine. Heavy, dense clay that holds a lot of water and warms slowly, with late budburst and a cold, wet footing in spring. In a dry summer that very water buffer is the advantage, provided the roots can get through it; compaction and poor aeration are the real problem. Gypsum supplies calcium and sulphur without carbonate, so chlorosis pressure is generally lower than on limestone, although the dolomite beds can raise it locally.
Comes to the surface in the Couchois, among other places around Saint-Maurice-les-Couches, and in the north of the Côte chalonnaise around Aluze, Charrecey and Bouzeron. In Rully the Trias appears at most on the western edge.
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: tA, FC, tG, l2-l3a.
brgm-bdcharm50 (4 September 2026)Sun and horizon
08:23
above the hill
19:10
behind the hill
10.8 h
sun at harvest
1.2 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 08:23 above the hill and disappears at 19:10 behind the hill: 10.8 hours of direct sun on a clear day. The ridge reaches 11.5° above the horizon to the southeast.
| Irradiation | −4.0% versus flat land 1,013 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 | 98.9% 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 | 06:22 | 20:56 | 14.6 h | 15.9 h |
| 20 September | 08:23 | 19:10 | 10.8 h | 12.3 h |
| 21 December | 09:57 | 16:07 | 6.2 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), 33% of the far field is forest (BD Forêt), no buildings.
Air and cold
22 m
above the lowest point
drains away
cold air
a gully
9.4 ha flows past
| Cold air | 22 m above the hollow, cold air drains awayign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Cold air passing through | 9.4 ha a gully, mean over the polygon 0.27 haign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Planting
ESE-WNW
diagonal to the slope
1.01 m
between the rows
97%
vineyard in 1950
| Rows | ESE-WNW (105°) diagonal to the slope (51°), every 1.01 m, all rows parallelmeasured over 0.7 of 0.7 ha plantedign-bdortho (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Vineyard in 1950 | 97% abandoned since: 4.26 haassessed over 5.3 ha on the 1950-1965 aerial photographign-photos-historiques-1950-1965 (6 September 2026) |
Climate over time
station MT-ST-VINCENT, 601 m, 24.8 km away
growing season, April to October: 1951-1980: 13.5 °C, 1991-2020: 15.1 °C
Huglin index: 1951-1980: 1,248, 1991-2020: 1,553
last spring frost: 1951-1980: day 107, 1991-2020: day 101
series homogenised through 2022
The name
- petit
- small, the counterpart of grand. Shape and position · Terroirium, Eigen telling over de namen in deze atlas (2026)
- varenne
- thin, sandy or gravelly ground, from Gaulish varenna. Soil and stone · Frédéric Godefroy, Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française (1881)
This is about the words, not about this plot: the same name can have arisen differently elsewhere.
Who owns land here
0.60 ha of 7.55 ha delimited is registered to a legal entity
- GFA DU DOMAINE DE L EVECHE5%
- SCI LE MONESTIER3%
- private individuals or unknown92%
- 0.34 ha GFA DU DOMAINE DE L EVECHE GFA · land company
- 0.26 ha SCI LE MONESTIER SCI · land company
Private individuals or unknown: 6.95 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 Mai Chaseau Regional · 250 m
- Au Vigneux Regional · 300 m
- Derriere Corcelle Regional · 350 m
- Les Chaumottes Regional · 400 m
- Les Sintres Regional · 450 m
- Le Mai Lacroix Regional · 500 m
- Les Cortouches Regional · 500 m
- Les Cordelieres Regional · 500 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.