Terroirium NederlandsFrançais

Lieu-dit · Saint-Vérand

En Besset

En Besset is a lieu-dit in Saint-Vérand, Mâconnais, Burgundy, whose largest tier is regional.

77.8 ha

delimited

353 m

elevation

11.0 h

sun at harvest

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

In figures

LevelRegionalinao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (c. 4 September 2026)
VillageSaint-Vérand
RegionMâconnais, Burgundy
Delimited77.8 hainao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (c. 4 September 2026) · cadastre-etalab (4 September 2026)
Planted28.7 hacadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) · ign-bdtopo-vigne (5 September 2026) · ign-rpg-2024 (5 September 2026)
Parcels182
Grape varietygamay also permitted: aligoté, chardonnay, melon, pinot gris, pinot noir, gamay de bouze, gamay de chaudenayinao-cahiers-des-charges (7 September 2026) · dgddi-superficies-produits (7 September 2026) · franceagrimer-observatoire-viticulture (7 September 2026)
Organic3%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-Vérand, from high to low:

sun at harvest 8
elevation 1
slope 5
on the slope 1

Position

353 m

elevation

17.4%

steep

NE

northeast

mid-slope

even slope

Elevation353 m 269 to 478 mign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)
Daytime temperature−0.34 °C by day, relative to the village centre at 306 m, ± 0.10 °Cmeteo-france-quotidiennes (6 September 2026) · meteo-france-postes (6 September 2026) · meteo-france-lsh (6 September 2026) · ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)
Slope17.4% 9.9°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)
Aspectnortheast 51°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)
On the slope46% mid slope, on an even plane, 297 m drains onto itign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)

Bedrock

youngold?
  • 20%Triassic to Hettangian, undifferentiated about 235–⁠199 million years
  • 27%Greenish Triassic sandstone and dolomite about 252–⁠237 million years
  • 30%Viséan tuff and ignimbrite about 340–⁠331 million years
  • 23%Alluvial fan with coarse material ouderdom onbepaald; naar alle waarschijnlijkheid Kwartair, laat-Pleistoceen tot Holoceen · hatched, outside the column

Not a borehole: ordered by age, thickness by share of surface.

In the glass. Tends towards fragrant, juicy Gamay with a firm, lightly spicy structure; compared with the sandy granite soils, more grip is often reported, but that is observation rather than an established link. How much is down to the rock and how much to slope, aspect and old vines remains open.

Not a sediment but volcanic ash baked solid. In the late Viséan, roughly 340 to 331 million years ago, explosive volcanoes in what is now the Beaujolais drove clouds of glowing ash and debris across the landscape; these settled and, through their own heat, welded together into ignimbrite and welded tuff. The rock is hard and light in colour, pink to pale grey, locally greenish through weathering, and weathers to a shallow stony soil with sharp fragments.

For the vine. The soil is shallow and very free-draining, with little fine earth and thus a limited water reserve. Stony, shallow soils warm quickly, which brings ripening forward; how strong that effect is depends mainly on slope and aspect. Lime is almost entirely absent, so chlorosis plays no role here; the downside is drought stress in warm summers, where much depends on the depth at which the roots find fissures in the rock.

Characteristic of the sector around Beaujeu, Vauxrenard and Saint-Lager; the rhyolites and tuffs of this episode underlie part of Juliénas, among other places. The pierre bleue of the Mont Brouilly does not belong here: that is metamorphosed diorite.

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: h2iρ, tG, J, tA-l1.

brgm-bdcharm50 (4 September 2026)

Sun and horizon

07:29

above the hill

18:31

behind the hill

11.0 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 18:31 behind the hill: 11.0 hours of direct sun on a clear day. The ridge reaches 12.5° above the horizon to the west-southwest.

Irradiation−4.4% versus flat land 1,021 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 sky99.4% 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
risesetsunday
21 June05:5620:3114.6 h15.8 h
20 September07:2918:3111.0 h12.3 h
21 December08:3615:216.8 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), 32% 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

47 m

above the lowest point

drains far away

cold air

a combe

26.8 ha flows past

Cold air47 m high on the slope, cold air drains far awayign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)
Cold air passing through26.8 ha a combe, mean over the polygon 0.39 haign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)

Planting

NE-SW

down the slope

1.24 m

between the rows

98%

vineyard in 1950

RowsNE-SW (42°) down the slope (9°), every 1.24 m, varies by plotmeasured over 26.1 of 28.7 ha plantedign-bdortho (6 September 2026)
Vineyard in 195098% abandoned since: 18.83 ha, planted since: 0.11 ha, rows then ran 25° differentlyassessed over 40.9 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, 6.7 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

Who owns land here

28.5 ha of 77.8 ha delimited is registered to a legal entity

  • CHATEAU DE CORCELLES18%
  • EARL DU DOMAINE DE FONTENAY7%
  • CHATEAU DE LA TOUR DE L'ANGE4%
  • GFA DU CHATEAU DE FAYE3%
  • DURRET-MARCHAND2%
  • 4 other legal entities2%
  • private individuals or unknown63%

Private individuals or unknown: 49.3 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.