Lieu-dit · Villiers-Saint-Denis
Les Folies
Les Folies is a lieu-dit in Villiers-Saint-Denis, Vallée de la Marne, Champagne, whose largest tier is champagne.
0.46 ha
delimited
97 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 | Champagneinao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (not in this commune) |
|---|---|
| Village | Villiers-Saint-Denis |
| Region | Vallée de la Marne, Champagne |
| Delimited | 0.46 hainao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (not in this commune) · cadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) |
| Planted | 0.37 hacadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) · ign-bdtopo-vigne (4 September 2026) · ign-rpg-2024 (5 September 2026) |
| Parcels | 3 |
| Grape variety | meunier 72 %, chardonnay 17 %, pinot noir 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) |
| Organic | 0%agence-bio-cartobio (c. 5 September 2026) · agence-bio-operateurs (5 September 2026) |
Place in the village
Among the 20 named plots ranked champagne in Villiers-Saint-Denis, from high to low:
Position
97 m
elevation
23.3%
very steep
SE
southeast
mid-slope
concave fold
| Elevation | 97 m 90 to 104 mign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Slope | 23.3% 13.1°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| Aspect | southeast 132°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
| On the slope | 24% mid slope, in a concave hollow, 207 m drains onto itign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Bedrock
- 78%Bartonian sand and sandstone of Beauchamp 41–39 million years
- 22%Lutetian limestone, undifferentiated 47.8–41.2 million years
Not a borehole: ordered by age, thickness by share of surface.
In the glass. Sandy subsoil tends towards lighter colour, softer tannin and earlier-drinking wine. How much of that comes from the sand and how much from position, yield and planting density cannot be separated. (weak indication)
Fine, often green-grey and glauconitic marine sand from a shallow coastal sea to lagoon, more clayey at the base and locally cemented into sandstone beds. Clayey interlayers occur locally; lignite is sometimes reported here but has not been recorded. Lower Bartonian, also called Auversian, roughly 41 to 39 million years.
For the vine. Sand drains quickly and warms up readily in spring, but holds little water, so drought stress comes early in a hot summer unless there is clay beneath. Roots penetrate it deeply with ease, which offsets part of that disadvantage. Where the sand has been decalcified there is little active lime and chlorosis hardly plays a part; on unleached sections the sand is calcareous, and that differs from parcel to parcel.
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: e6aB, e5.
brgm-bdcharm50 (4 September 2026)Sun and horizon
07:55
above the hill
18:45
behind the hill
10.8 h
sun at harvest
0.6 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 07:55 above the hill and disappears at 18:45 behind the hill: 10.8 hours of direct sun on a clear day. The ridge reaches 12.1° above the horizon to the north-northwest.
| Irradiation | +2.7% versus flat land 1,019 kWh/m² from April to October, 45% 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 (not in this commune) · ign-bdforet-v2 (5 September 2026) · jrc-pvgis-sarah3 (10 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Open sky | 99.1% of the sky the slope itself sees; the surrounding relief blocks the restign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) · ign-lidarhd-mnh (not in this commune) · ign-bdforet-v2 (5 September 2026) |
Three reference days and the caveat
| rise | set | sun | day | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 June | 06:21 | 20:25 | 14.1 h | 16.2 h |
| 20 September | 07:55 | 18:45 | 10.8 h | 12.3 h |
| 21 December | 08:59 | 15:58 | 7.0 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), 38% of the far field is forest (BD Forêt), no buildings.
Air and cold
20 m
above the lowest point
drains away
cold air
little inflow
0.5 ha flows past
| Cold air | 20 m above the hollow, cold air drains awayign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Cold air passing through | 0.5 ha little inflow, mean over the polygon 0.10 haign-rge-alti (5 September 2026) |
Planting
ESE-WNW
down the slope
1.03 m
between the rows
100%
vineyard in 1950
| Rows | ESE-WNW (117°) down the slope (15°), every 1.03 m, all rows parallelmeasured over 0.4 of 0.4 ha plantedign-bdortho (6 September 2026) |
|---|---|
| Vineyard in 1950 | 100%assessed over 0.1 ha on the 1950-1965 aerial photographign-photos-historiques-1950-1965 (6 September 2026) |
The name
- folie
- a country retreat. From Old French feuillie for a leafy shelter, not from folly. Ownership and saints · 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
0.03 ha of 0.46 ha delimited is registered to a legal entity
- SSION DE M GARMIGNY ABEL PAR LES HERITIERS7%
- private individuals or unknown93%
- 0.03 ha SSION DE M GARMIGNY ABEL PAR LES HERITIERS AUPM · other · management
Private individuals or unknown: 0.42 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 Sablons Champagne · 50 m
- Les Rencheries Champagne · 350 m
- Les Vieilles Vignes Champagne · 450 m
- Les Carbonnes Champagne · 500 m
- Belle-Vue Champagne · 600 m
- La Porte du Parc Champagne · 700 m
- La Pierre Fritte Champagne · 750 m
- Les Pierries Champagne · 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.