Lieu-dit · Tracy-sur-Loire
Les Vallées
Les Vallées is a lieu-dit in Tracy-sur-Loire, Nivernais, Centre-Loire, whose largest tier is village.
3.20 ha
delimited
167 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 | Villageinao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (c. 4 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Village | Tracy-sur-Loire |
| Region | Nivernais, Centre-Loire |
| Delimited | 3.20 hainao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (c. 4 September 2026) · cadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) |
| Planted | 0.13 hacadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) · ign-bdtopo-vigne (5 September 2026) · ign-rpg-2024 (5 September 2026) |
| Parcels | 50 |
| Grape variety | sauvignoninao-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 67 named plots ranked village in Tracy-sur-Loire, from high to low:
Position
167 m
elevation
18.8%
steep
SW
southwest
mid-slope
concave fold
| Elevation | 167 m 155 to 183 mign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Slope | 18.8% 10.6°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| Aspect | southwest 217°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| On the slope | 32% mid slope, in a concave hollow, 408 m drains onto itign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Bedrock
- 74%Alluvium and colluvium of valley floors and footslopes circa 0,12 tot heden
- 26%Upper Kimmeridgian limestone and marl about 152–149 million years (approximation, regional division)
Not a borehole: ordered by age, thickness by share of surface.
In the glass. Because each plot is a different mixture, no reliable flavour rule can be attached to it. Where the layer is deep and fine, in practice rounder, less tense wines go with it than higher up the slope, but that follows from soil depth and position, not from the material. (weak indication)
Not a rock but a collective name for everything that has come down by water and gravity and has come to rest on the valley floor or at the foot of the slope. The composition mirrors what lies above: sandy and lime-free beneath a granite hill, stony and lime-rich beneath a limestone plateau. It is young material, largely from the last ice age and the Holocene, and the layer can be anything from a few decimetres to several metres thick.
For the vine. These positions are generally deeper and more fertile than the slope above, with more fine material and therefore more moisture reserve, which is an advantage in a dry summer. Against that, valley floors collect cold air and water, stay wet and cold in spring and are prone to late frost. Where the subsoil is clayey, periodic waterlogging occurs, and that hampers rooting more than acidity or lime.
Covers a large part of the flatter zones below the crus. Exactly which plots lie on it differs from commune to commune and requires the map itself.
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: FC, j7.
brgm-bdcharm50 (4 September 2026)Sun and horizon
08:27
above the hill
19:14
behind the hill
10.8 h
sun at harvest
0.9 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 08:27 above the hill and disappears at 19:14 behind the hill: 10.8 hours of direct sun on a clear day. The ridge reaches 12.1° above the horizon to the north. The relief costs 0.6% of the irradiation from April to October, direct and diffuse together.
| Irradiation | +2.7% versus flat land 1,056 kWh/m² from April to October, 42% 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 | 97.9% 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 | 07:01 | 20:44 | 13.7 h | 15.9 h |
| 20 September | 08:27 | 19:14 | 10.8 h | 12.3 h |
| 21 December | 09:37 | 16:18 | 6.7 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), 22% 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.
Air and cold
16 m
above the lowest point
drains away
cold air
a main drain
51.8 ha flows past
| Cold air | 16 m above the hollow, cold air drains awayign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Cold air passing through | 51.8 ha a main drain, mean over the polygon 5.73 haign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Planting
N-S
down the slope
1.25 m
between the rows
91%
vineyard in 1950
| Rows | N-S (9°) down the slope (28°), every 1.25 m, varies by plotmeasured over 0.1 of 0.1 ha plantedign-bdortho (6 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Vineyard in 1950 | 91% abandoned since: 1.78 ha, rows then ran 44° differentlyassessed over 2.2 ha on the 1950-1965 aerial photographign-photos-historiques-1950-1965 (6 September 2026) |
Climate over time
station COURS LES COSNE, 196 m, 13.2 km away
raw daily series, not corrected for station breaks
The name
- 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
0.25 ha of 3.20 ha delimited is registered to a legal entity
- GFA LES PETITS CRIS3%
- S C I DU VAL DE LOIRE NIVERNAIS3%
- PATRICE MOREUX2%
- private individuals or unknown92%
- 0.11 ha GFA LES PETITS CRIS GFA · land company
- 0.09 ha S C I DU VAL DE LOIRE NIVERNAIS SCI · land company
- 0.05 ha GFA FLAMENCO GFA · land company
Private individuals or unknown: 2.95 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
- Les Champs de Jaux Village · 150 m
- Les Carrières Village · 150 m
- Les Travers des Plantes Village · 200 m
- Les Vandardes Village · 300 m
- Les Champs des Noyers Village · 300 m
- Le Champ Gorde Village · 350 m
- Les Sables Village · 350 m
- Les Girarmes Village · 350 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.