Lieu-dit · Verzy
Les Alouettes
Les Alouettes is a lieu-dit in Verzy, Montagne de Reims, Champagne, whose largest tier is grand cru.
3.60 ha
delimited
132 m
elevation
11.9 h
sun at harvest
Open on the mapWith the boundary, the plots, the sun through the year and the bedrock.
In figures
| Level | Grand Cruinao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (not in this commune) |
|---|---|
| Village | Verzy |
| Region | Montagne de Reims, Champagne |
| Delimited | 3.60 hainao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (not in this commune) · cadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) |
| Planted | 3.47 hacadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) · ign-bdtopo-vigne (4 September 2026) · ign-rpg-2024 (5 September 2026) |
| Parcels | 37 |
| Grape variety | pinot noir 88 %, chardonnay 12 % 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 | 2%agence-bio-cartobio (c. 5 September 2026) · agence-bio-operateurs (5 September 2026) |
Place in the village
Among the 69 named plots ranked grand cru in Verzy, from high to low:
Position
132 m
elevation
5.0%
gentle
NE
northeast
mid-slope
even slope
| Elevation | 132 m 127 to 137 mign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Slope | 5.0% 2.9°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| Aspect | northeast 42°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| On the slope | 23% mid slope, on an even plane, 145 m drains onto itign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Bedrock
- 100%Plateau loam, decalcified silt about 0.2–0.01 million years (rough estimate)
In the glass. Tends towards fruity, supple wine with less firmness than the limestone slopes alongside. That is mainly due to the deep, water-retaining soil and the flat, cooler position; altitude and aspect weigh more heavily here than the material itself. (weak indication)
Partly fine dust carried in by the wind during the ice ages, partly weathering residue of the underlying limestone, left behind on the plateaus and decalcified by rainwater. That mixed origin also explains the flint nodules that occur in it. It is silt, smooth and homogeneous between the fingers, mainly late Pleistocene, with older reworked material in it.
For the vine. Holds water exceptionally well and is easily rooted, so drought is rarely the problem here. On the flat plateau the downside is that the soil stays cold, gets going late and can be waterlogged in spring. Because the material is decalcified, chlorosis hardly plays a part, but vigour all the more so.
Mainly on the plateaus above the Côte, in the Hautes-Côtes and around the Chablisien.
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: LP.
brgm-bdcharm50 (4 September 2026)Sun and horizon
07:28
above the flat horizon
19:20
behind the hill
11.9 h
sun at harvest
Grey: sun up, behind the hill or its own slope.
Around harvest the sun rises here at 07:28 above the flat horizon and disappears at 19:20 behind the hill: 11.9 hours of direct sun on a clear day. The ridge reaches 5.8° above the horizon to the south-southwest.
| Irradiation | −1.3% versus flat land 995 kWh/m² from April to October, 46% 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) |
|---|
Three reference days, the caveat
| rise | set | sun | day | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 June | 05:40 | 21:46 | 16.1 h | 16.2 h |
| 20 September | 07:28 | 19:20 | 11.9 h | 12.3 h |
| 21 December | 08:38 | 16:04 | 7.4 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), 26% of the far field is forest (BD Forêt), no buildings.
Air and cold
17 m
above the lowest point
drains away
cold air
little inflow
1.1 ha flows past
| Cold air | 17 m above the hollow, cold air drains awayign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Cold air passing through | 1.1 ha little inflow, mean over the polygon 0.13 haign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Planting
NE-SW
down the slope
1.16 m
between the rows
100%
vineyard in 1950
| Rows | NE-SW (49°) down the slope (7°), every 1.16 m, all rows parallelmeasured over 3.3 of 3.5 ha plantedign-bdortho (6 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Vineyard in 1950 | 100%assessed over 3.4 ha on the 1950-1965 aerial photographign-photos-historiques-1950-1965 (6 September 2026) |
Climate over time
station REIMS-COURCY, 91 m, 19.2 km away
growing season, April to October: 1951-1980: 14.1 °C, 1991-2020: 15.0 °C
Huglin index: 1951-1980: 1,477, 1991-2020: 1,639
last spring frost: 1951-1980: day 118, 1991-2020: day 107
raw daily series, not corrected for station breaks
Who owns land here
0.96 ha of 3.60 ha delimited is registered to a legal entity
- M H C S16%
- CHAMPAGNE LOUIS ROEDERER10%
- private individuals or unknown73%
- 0.59 ha M H C S SA · other
- 0.37 ha CHAMPAGNE LOUIS ROEDERER SA · wine business · organic
Private individuals or unknown: 2.64 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 Hauts Champs Grand Cru · 200 m
- Les Saints Bets Grand Cru · 200 m
- Les Basses Cumaines Grand Cru · 350 m
- La Queue des Loges Grand Cru · 400 m
- Le Bois la Souris Grand Cru · 550 m
- La Barbette Grand Cru · 650 m
- Les Champs Saint-Remy Grand Cru · 700 m
- Les Vignes de Courmelois Grand Cru · 750 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.