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Lieu-dit · Saulcy

Vignes de l'Abbé Vaux

Vignes de l'Abbé Vaux is a lieu-dit in Saulcy, Côte des Bar, Champagne, whose largest tier is champagne.

5.30 ha

delimited

307 m

elevation

10.7 h

sun at harvest

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

In figures

LevelChampagneinao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (not in this commune)
VillageSaulcy
RegionCôte des Bar, Champagne
Delimited5.30 hainao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (not in this commune) · cadastre-etalab (4 September 2026)
Planted5.02 hacadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) · ign-bdtopo-vigne (4 September 2026) · ign-rpg-2024 (5 September 2026)
Parcels17
Grape varietypinot noir 76 %, meunier 14 %, chardonnay 10 % also permitted: arbane, petit meslier, pinot blanc, pinot grisinao-cahiers-des-charges (7 September 2026) · dgddi-superficies-produits (7 September 2026) · franceagrimer-observatoire-viticulture (7 September 2026)
Organic0%agence-bio-cartobio (c. 5 September 2026) · agence-bio-operateurs (5 September 2026)

Place in the village

Among the 6 named plots ranked champagne in Saulcy, from high to low:

sun at harvest 6th
elevation 1st
slope 2nd
on the slope 3rd

Position

307 m

elevation

21.4%

very steep

SSW

south-southwest

upper

concave fold

Elevation307 m 282 to 328 mign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)
Daytime temperature−0.03 °C by day, relative to the village centre at 301 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)
Slope21.4% 12.1°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)
Aspectsouth-southwest 204°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)
On the slope52% upper slope, in a concave hollow, 309 m drains onto itign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)

Bedrock

  • 100%Kimmeridgian marl and limestone 155–⁠149 million years

In the glass. Tends towards taut, far from lush white wine with firm acidity. The word salty belongs to the traditional tasting vocabulary for Chablis and does not rest on a demonstrable link with the rock; slope, exposure and soil depth are at least as decisive here.

An alternation of grey marl and harder, shell-rich limestone beds, deposited in a quiet, shallow sea at most a few tens of metres deep. The marl is full of small oysters of the genus Exogyra, the identifying mark of this layer in the field. Upper Jurassic, Kimmeridgian, roughly 155 to 149 million years old.

For the vine. The marl holds water, the limestone beds within it provide drainage and anchorage; together that gives a soil that keeps supplying moisture for a long time in a dry summer without the roots becoming waterlogged in spring, provided there is a slope beneath it. On flat ground the same layer becomes cold and wet. The active lime content is usually high, so chlorosis-resistant rootstocks are needed as a rule, and roots penetrate the soft marl relatively easily.

Characteristic of the slopes of Chablis (grand cru and premier cru) and further of Tonnerre, Épineuil, Irancy and Saint-Bris.

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: j6b-cN.

brgm-bdcharm50 (4 September 2026)

Sun and horizon

08:21

above the hill

19:00

behind the hill

10.7 h

sun at harvest

1.2 h

lost to the hill

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

Around harvest the sun rises here at 08:21 above the hill and disappears at 19:00 behind the hill: 10.7 hours of direct sun on a clear day. The ridge reaches 21.6° above the horizon to the north. The relief costs 0.9% of the irradiation from April to October, direct and diffuse together.

Irradiation+3.4% versus flat land 1,025 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 sky97.4% 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, the caveat
risesetsunday
21 June07:1920:1713.0 h16.1 h
20 September08:2119:0010.7 h12.3 h
21 December09:3216:357.0 h8.3 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), 36% of the far field is forest (BD Forêt), no buildings.

The irradiation loss does include clouds: the average of 2005 to 2023 (PVGIS-SARAH3, EU JRC), not any particular year.

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

Air and cold

33 m

above the lowest point

drains far away

cold air

a gully

2.1 ha flows past

Cold air33 m high on the slope, cold air drains far awayign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)
Cold air passing through2.1 ha a gully, mean over the polygon 0.30 haign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)

Planting

N-S

down the slope

1.08 m

between the rows

83%

vineyard in 1950

RowsN-S (8°) down the slope (16°), every 1.08 m, slightly fannedmeasured over 4.9 of 5.0 ha plantedign-bdortho (6 September 2026)
Vineyard in 195083% planted since: 0.84 haassessed over 5.0 ha on the 1950-1965 aerial photographign-photos-historiques-1950-1965 (6 September 2026)

Climate over time

2000202014°16°18°

station AILLEVILLE_SAPC, 195 m, 11.4 km away

raw daily series, not corrected for station breaks

The name

vigne
vineyard, the ordinary word for planted ground. The most common element in this atlas, usually descriptive rather than distinguishing. Viticulture · Terroirium, Eigen telling over de namen in deze atlas (2026)
val
valley. Vaux and vau are the same root in the plural and in older form. Relief · 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

2.54 ha of 5.30 ha delimited is registered to a legal entity

  • VIGNES DU CERF48%
  • private individuals or unknown52%

Private individuals or unknown: 2.75 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.

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.