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Lieu-dit · Volnay

Les Grands Champs

Les Grands Champs is a lieu-dit in Volnay, Côte de Beaune, Burgundy, whose largest tier is village. It lies within the official cru Les Mitans.

6.97 ha

delimited

246 m

elevation

11.7 h

sun at harvest

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

In figures

LevelVillage 97%
Premier Cru 4%inao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (c. 4 September 2026)
Official cruLes Mitans
VillageVolnay
RegionCôte de Beaune, Burgundy
Delimited6.97 hainao-aoc-viticoles-bulk (c. 4 September 2026) · cadastre-etalab (4 September 2026)
Planted6.83 hacadastre-etalab (4 September 2026) · ign-bdtopo-vigne (5 September 2026) · ign-rpg-2024 (5 September 2026)
Parcels50
Grape varietypinot noir also permitted: chardonnay, pinot blanc, pinot grisinao-cahiers-des-charges (7 September 2026) · dgddi-superficies-produits (7 September 2026) · franceagrimer-observatoire-viticulture (7 September 2026)
Organic38%agence-bio-cartobio (c. 5 September 2026) · agence-bio-operateurs (5 September 2026)

Place in the village

Among the 23 named plots ranked village in Volnay, from high to low:

sun at harvest 12
elevation 10
slope 13
on the slope 10

Position

246 m

elevation

2.8%

gentle

ESE

east-southeast

foot

even slope

Elevation246 m 241 to 250 mign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)
Daytime temperature+0.08 °C by day, relative to the village centre at 257 m, ± 0.01 °Cmeteo-france-quotidiennes (6 September 2026) · meteo-france-postes (6 September 2026) · meteo-france-lsh (6 September 2026) · ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)
Slope2.8% 1.6°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)
Aspecteast-southeast 120°ign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)
On the slope17% foot of the slope, on an even plane, 670 m drains onto itign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)

Bedrock

  • 100%Stratified frost scree and colluvium 0.115–⁠0.012 million years (laatste ijstijd)

In the glass. Wines from this substrate are often described as finer in structure. In so far as that holds, it is due to the stony, free-draining profile that curbs vigour, not to the rubble itself.

Slope scree that formed in the last ice age when the limestone cliffs above the vineyard broke apart through repeated freezing and thawing, mixed with material washed down from higher up later on. It is not a rock but a blanket of limestone rubble, gravel and sand in a silty, lime-rich matrix, often arranged in distinct layers on the slope. Roughly 115,000 to 12,000 years old, and the composition depends entirely on which rock outcrops higher up the slope.

For the vine. For the vine this is often a favourable profile: deeper than above a hard limestone slab, well drained, stony and poor in clay. Water drains away quickly, which is an advantage in a wet summer and a risk in a dry one, unless the blanket is thick enough. The material is prone to erosion and only works on a slope; at the bottom, where the deposit becomes thick and finer, it soon turns too fertile.

On the Côte de Nuits this scree locally forms the mantle over the Comblanchien, among other places in the scree fans at the mouths of the combes, and around Morey-Saint-Denis and Marsannay. Whether individual climats such as Monts Luisants lie on it must be read from the map layer 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: GP.

brgm-bdcharm50 (c. 4 September 2026)

Sun and horizon

07:27

above the hill

19:11

behind the hill

11.7 h

sun at harvest

Grey: sun up, but behind the hill or the vineyard's own slope.

Around harvest the sun rises here at 07:27 above the hill and disappears at 19:11 behind the hill: 11.7 hours of direct sun on a clear day. The ridge reaches 6.9° above the horizon to the west.

Irradiation+0.4% versus flat land 1,051 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 sky99.8% 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
risesetsunday
21 June05:4720:5715.2 h15.9 h
20 September07:2719:1111.7 h12.3 h
21 December08:2516:378.2 h8.5 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), 32% of the far field is forest (BD Forêt), no buildings.

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

Air and cold

6 m

above the lowest point

comes close

cold air

a combe

38.4 ha flows past

Cold air6 m low on the slope, cold air comes closeign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)
Cold air passing through38.4 ha a combe, mean over the polygon 1.47 haign-rge-alti (5 September 2026)

Planting

NNE-SSW

across the slope

1.05 m

between the rows

100%

vineyard in 1950

RowsNNE-SSW (32°) across the slope (89°), every 1.05 m, varies by plotmeasured over 5.7 of 6.8 ha plantedign-bdortho (5 September 2026)
Vineyard in 1950100%assessed over 6.3 ha on the 1950-1965 aerial photographign-photos-historiques-1950-1965 (6 September 2026)

Climate over time

196019802000202012°14°16°

station LA ROCHEPOT, 417 m, 9.8 km away

growing season, April to October: 1951-1980: 14.1 °C, 1991-2020: 15.2 °C

Huglin index: 1951-1980: 1,528, 1991-2020: 1,726

last spring frost: 1951-1980: day 115, 1991-2020: day 108

raw daily series, not corrected for station breaks

The name

grand
large, usually relative to a smaller plot with the same name. Shape and position · Terroirium, Eigen telling over de namen in deze atlas (2026)
champ
field, from Latin campus. The third most common element in this atlas and usually descriptive: open arable land, often predating the vines. Work and use · Terroirium, Eigen telling over de namen in deze atlas (2026)

This is about the words, not about this plot: the same name can have arisen differently elsewhere.

Who owns land here

3.37 ha of 6.97 ha delimited is registered to a legal entity

  • DU DOMAINE DES EPENEAUX10%
  • SCEA DOMAINE DES ROSES7%
  • HERITIERS MICHEL LAFARGUE5%
  • EARL FERNAND ET LAURENT PILLOT5%
  • DOMAINE MARQUIS D'ANGERVILLE4%
  • 5 other legal entities17%
  • private individuals or unknown52%

Private individuals or unknown: 3.60 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

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.