Lieu-dit · Saint-Martin-Belle-Roche
Les Verchères
Les Verchères is a lieu-dit in Saint-Martin-Belle-Roche, Mâconnais, Burgundy, whose largest tier is regional.
2.89 ha
delimited
205 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-Martin-Belle-Roche |
| Region | Mâconnais, Burgundy |
| Delimited | 2.89 hainao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (c. 4 September 2026) · cadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) |
| Planted | 1.04 hacadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) · ign-bdtopo-vigne (5 September 2026) · ign-rpg-2024 (5 September 2026) |
| Parcels | 18 |
| Grape variety | gamay / chardonnay also permitted: pinot noir, gamay de bouze, gamay de chaudenay, aligoté, pinot blanc, pinot gris, melon, sacyinao-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 11 named plots ranked regional in Saint-Martin-Belle-Roche, from high to low:
Position
205 m
elevation
5.4%
gentle
SSE
south-southeast
mid-slope
even slope
| Elevation | 205 m 198 to 210 mign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Daytime temperature | −0.03 °C by day, relative to the village centre at 201 m, ± 0.01 °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 | 5.4% 3.1°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| Aspect | south-southeast 167°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| On the slope | 31% mid slope, on an even plane, 227 m drains onto itign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Bedrock
- 34%Heterogeneous slope deposits (colluvium and scree) jonger dan circa 0,13 (laat-Pleistoceen tot Holoceen)
- 66%Nantoux limestone and Mercurey marl 157–155 million years
Not a borehole: ordered by age, thickness by share of surface.
In the glass. Where a marl layer lies within reach of the roots, the water supply in a dry summer is more generous than on the purely hard limestones. Wines from such plots are often described as fuller, but that works through the water reserve and not through the stone.
Fine, lithographic limestone that passes upwards into oolitic beds, with beneath it the grey marls of Mercurey, a formation in its own right that the map places under the same code. Deposited on a shallow, warm platform sea in which calm lagoons and agitated sandbanks alternated. Where the marl emerges at the foot of the limestone beds, a break in slope forms. Upper Oxfordian, about 157 to 155 million years old.
For the vine. What counts here is the stacking: marl at the bottom that retains water, limestone above that drains and supplies stone at the surface. Where a marl layer lies beneath a stony cover, the vine has a water reserve in August and surplus water can still get away in spring. Pure marl is cold and slow in spring and heavy to work, and the lime content varies greatly over short distances, so the chlorosis risk does too.
Named after Nantoux in the Hautes-Côtes de Beaune and after Mercurey; the combination is characteristic of the Côte chalonnaise and of the higher slopes and flatter steps of the Côte de Beaune.
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: j5c, Ch.
brgm-bdcharm50 (4 September 2026)Sun and horizon
07:29
above the hill
19:13
behind the hill
11.7 h
sun at harvest
Grey: sun up, but behind the hill or the vineyard's own slope.
Around harvest the sun rises here at 07:29 above the hill and disappears at 19:13 behind the hill: 11.7 hours of direct sun on a clear day. The ridge reaches 5.2° above the horizon to the west-northwest.
| Irradiation | +1.4% versus flat land 1,089 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 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 and the caveat
| rise | set | sun | day | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 June | 05:58 | 20:59 | 15.0 h | 15.8 h |
| 20 September | 07:29 | 19:13 | 11.7 h | 12.3 h |
| 21 December | 08:25 | 16:34 | 8.2 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), 27% of the far field is forest (BD Forêt), no buildings.
Air and cold
14 m
above the lowest point
drains away
cold air
a gully
4.6 ha flows past
| Cold air | 14 m above the hollow, cold air drains awayign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Cold air passing through | 4.6 ha a gully, mean over the polygon 0.49 haign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Planting
NNE-SSW
diagonal to the slope
1.34 m
between the rows
65%
vineyard in 1950
| Rows | NNE-SSW (21°) diagonal to the slope (34°), every 1.34 m, all rows parallelmeasured over 1.0 of 1.0 ha plantedign-bdortho (6 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Vineyard in 1950 | 65% abandoned since: 0.65 haassessed over 2.7 ha on the 1950-1965 aerial photographign-photos-historiques-1950-1965 (6 September 2026) |
Climate over time
station MACON, 219 m, 10.7 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
- verchere
- good worked land close to the village, from Latin vervactum for fallow. Mostly in the Maconnais and the Cote chalonnaise. Ownership and saints · 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
No parcel here is registered to a legal entity. In France only those owners are public; parcels of private individuals are not.
Nearby lieux-dits
- Les Verchères Calis Regional · 150 m
- Les Perrières Cailles Regional · 200 m
- En Bamout Regional · 200 m
- Les Noyerettes Regional · 350 m
- Aux Creys Regional · 600 m
- Le Clos Joubert Regional · 850 m
- Vignes Blaisons Regional · 900 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.