Lieu-dit · Vert-Toulon
Les Caves
Les Caves is a lieu-dit in Vert-Toulon, Côte de Sézanne, Champagne, whose largest tier is champagne.
1.75 ha
delimited
192 m
elevation
9.8 h
sun at harvest
Open on the mapWith the boundary, the plots, the sun through the year and the bedrock.
In figures
| Level | Champagneinao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (not in this commune) |
|---|---|
| Village | Vert-Toulon |
| Region | Côte de Sézanne, Champagne |
| Delimited | 1.75 hainao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (not in this commune) · cadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) |
| Planted | 1.44 hacadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) · ign-bdtopo-vigne (4 September 2026) · ign-rpg-2024 (5 September 2026) |
| Parcels | 4 |
| Grape variety | chardonnay 86 %, meunier 14 % 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) |
| Organic | 0%agence-bio-cartobio (c. 5 September 2026) · agence-bio-operateurs (5 September 2026) |
Place in the village
Among the 30 named plots ranked champagne in Vert-Toulon, from high to low:
Position
192 m
elevation
19.7%
steep
WNW
west-northwest
mid-slope
even slope
| Elevation | 192 m 178 to 204 mign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Daytime temperature | −0.08 °C by day, relative to the village centre at 181 m, ± 0.04 °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 | 19.7% 11.2°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| Aspect | west-northwest 302°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| On the slope | 47% mid slope, on an even plane, 172 m drains onto itign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Bedrock
- 7%Colluvium, mixed slope deposit about 0.1–0 million years
- 93%Campanian chalk with belemnites 78–72 million years
Not a borehole: ordered by age, thickness by share of surface.
In the glass. The reputation of taut wines with high acidity on chalk runs through water regime, soil depth and the cool climate. A direct transfer of taste from the stone has not been demonstrated.
Pure white writing chalk, built up from the calcareous plates of microscopic plankton that drifted down to the seabed. It is a very soft limestone that crumbles between the fingers, consists of more than ninety per cent lime and can be hundreds of metres thick. Upper Campanian, roughly 78 to 72 million years ago, named after the belemnites and the small brachiopod Magas pumilus; what is characteristic is precisely the scarcity of flint, unlike in the older chalk.
For the vine. Chalk holds a great deal of water in very fine pores and releases it slowly, so the vine comes under stress later in a dry summer than on shallow, stony soils; in extreme years chalk too falls back. Roots follow cracks to several metres deep, while the top few decimetres drain quickly. The soils on this substrate generally have a very high active lime content, to be determined per parcel, which explains the choice in Champagne of 41B and to a lesser extent SO4 and 3309C.
Characteristic of the Côte des Blancs (Cramant, Avize, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger) and the slopes around Épernay.
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: c5b, C.
brgm-bdcharm50 (4 September 2026)Sun and horizon
09:53
above the hill
19:40
behind the hill
9.8 h
sun at harvest
1.4 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 09:53 above the hill and disappears at 19:40 behind the hill: 9.8 hours of direct sun on a clear day. The ridge reaches 23.2° above the horizon to the east-southeast. The relief costs 1.1% of the irradiation from April to October, direct and diffuse together.
| Irradiation | −5.5% versus flat land 964 kWh/m² from April to October, 47% 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 | 98.3% 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 | 07:56 | 21:45 | 13.8 h | 16.2 h |
| 20 September | 09:53 | 19:40 | 9.8 h | 12.3 h |
| 21 December | 11:49 | 16:11 | 4.4 h | 8.2 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), 18% 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
24 m
above the lowest point
drains away
cold air
a gully
2.0 ha flows past
| Cold air | 24 m above the hollow, cold air drains awayign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Cold air passing through | 2.0 ha a gully, mean over the polygon 0.20 haign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Planting
ESE-WNW
down the slope
1.09 m
between the rows
100%
vineyard in 1950
| Rows | ESE-WNW (113°) down the slope (9°), every 1.09 m, slightly fannedmeasured over 1.4 of 1.4 ha plantedign-bdortho (6 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Vineyard in 1950 | 100% rows then ran 55° differentlyassessed over 1.8 ha on the 1950-1965 aerial photographign-photos-historiques-1950-1965 (6 September 2026) |
Climate over time
station EPERNAY, 90 m, 22.0 km away
raw daily series, not corrected for station breaks
The name
- cave
- cellar, or a hollow cut into the rock. Work and use · 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
- Le Pommerat Champagne · 250 m
- Toulon la Montagne Toulon la Montagne Champagne · 600 m
- Sous les Vignettes Champagne · 700 m
- La Côte de la Potette Champagne · 700 m
- Les Vignettes Champagne · 800 m
- Les Monts Champagne · 1.1 km
- Les Marnières Champagne · 1.1 km
- La Crayère Champagne · 1.2 km
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.