Irancy
A horseshoe of Kimmeridgian slopes, turned away from the north wind.
Irancy lies at the head of a dry side valley of the Yonne, cut into the escarpment that crosses the north of Burgundy. The valley ends in a horseshoe of slopes around the village, opening to the south-west, with vines, cherry orchards and woods on it. The rim is hard Tithonian limestone, the calcaire du Barrois, mostly left to the woods. The slopes below are Kimmeridgian marl full of a small fossil oyster, Exogyra virgula: the same beds as Chablis, about 15 km to the north-east, with the Astarte limestone of the lower Kimmeridgian at the very foot. The soils are limestone scree and clay. The rim keeps the north wind off the bowl, which helps the grapes ripen this far north. A decree of February 1999 made Irancy an appellation of its own, for red wine only, across Irancy, Cravant and Vincelottes: Pinot Noir, with up to a tenth of César and Pinot Gris together. About 5 ha of César are left.
Stéphanie Colinot’s three named vineyards lie on three sides of the bowl. Les Cailles (the name means pebbles; André Jullien listed it among Irancy’s best in 1816) is 0.68 ha on the Vincelottes side, facing south-east by her account, stonier and cooler: “in summer it is less hot in this part of the vineyard.” It is pure Pinot, planted about fifteen years ago. La Comme, 0.78 ha, sits low on the Mazelots hill near the village and faces south-west. Côte du Moutier, a quarter-hectare facing full south just above the village, once belonged to the abbey of Saint-Germain d’Auxerre and carries about eight per cent César. La Cerise sur le Coteau comes from south-facing parcels at Cravant. Palotte and Les Mazelots stayed with the family domaine; her new plantings at Poncelles and Veaupessiot are not on the plate.
Tap any two to compare them and cut a slice between them: Les Cailles against Côte du Moutier crosses the bowl from its cooler Vincelottes side to the full-south slope above the village. Lieux-dits are placed from the land register; the Cravant pin is approximate, as the caption explains. Her Bourgogne Épineuil is on Plate XV, about 30 km to the north-east.
Curve shapes are illustrative; the size of each swing is from published figures.
Soils from the grower (via our producer page) and the published geology of the appellation. Soil depths are not published, so the pits are drawn to suggest the ground, not to scale.
Every producer on this plate
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How the ground is shown: there is no open soil map at the scale of a lieu-dit, so colours and pits follow what the grower and the published geology describe. Heights and slopes come from the elevation data.
Heights marked as the grower's figure come from our producer notes; others are read off the elevation data at the pin. Soil notes come from the producers' technical sheets.
Sources: elevation from AWS Terrain Tiles (EU-DEM and other public data); lieux-dits from the French land register (Etalab cadastre) and the BIVB’s Bourgogne Maps; geology, César and the appellation rules from the INAO specification and the BRGM geological map as summarised in the French Wikipedia entry for the Irancy AOC; the decree of 26 February 1999 (Légifrance); the amphitheatre and its shelter from burgundywine.com; André Jullien, Topographie de tous les vignobles connus (1816); parcels, aspects and quotations from Stéphanie Colinot, via our producer page; tasting words from the Guide Hachette and the Revue du Vin de France, as attributed.