Brouillet

Location

Brouillet lies in the north-west of the Marne département, in the Grand Est region, and belongs to the farming landscape of the Tardenois. The village is about 28 kilometres from Reims as the crow flies, or 31 kilometres by road. Dormans is 24 kilometres away and Fismes 12. The commune belongs to the canton of Dormans-Paysages de Champagne and, since 2014, to the Communauté de communes Ardre et Châtillonnais.

The village sits in a valley shaped by the Ruisseau de Brouillet, which flows from south to north and joins the Ardre near Crugny. Above the village rise the Bois le Moine, at more than 230 metres, to the west, the Petite Montagne at 185 metres to the east, and the Montagne de Lhéry at 173 metres to the north-east. Across the commune's 458 hectares, the terrain ranges from 94 to 237 metres in altitude. The neighbouring communes are Crugny, Serzy-et-Prin, Lagery and Arcis-le-Ponsart.

Landscape and viticulture

Brouillet holds neither grand cru nor premier cru status. The land use shows how rural the place is: in 2018, around 71 per cent of the area was farmed. Arable land accounts for 44.7 per cent and woodland for 29 per cent. Permanent crops cover 19.8 per cent of the area. In this part of the world, that often includes vineyards, but the source gives no details. If you are looking for champagne here, you are more likely to find it with the small growers of the surrounding area than under a well-known name from the village itself.

“The land use shows how rural the place is: in 2018, around 71 per cent of the area was farmed.

Climate

The climate is oceanic, with moderate sunshine and rainfall spread evenly through the year. The nearest Météo-France weather station, at Chambrecy, eight kilometres away, records a mean annual temperature of 10.7 °C and an average of 734 millimetres of rain for 1991 to 2020. The extremes: 40.3 °C on 25 July 2019 and minus 22.1 °C on 17 January 1985. For viticulture, swings like these, especially spring frost and summer heat, are a familiar concern across the whole of Champagne.

Chanoine Frères Champagner 1730

Name and sights

The village name is documented as Broilletum from the year 1223. It goes back to an old word for a small, enclosed copse, later an enclosed, wooded and built-up space surrounded by a hedge or wall.

• The church of Notre-Dame, the only listed monument named in the source
• Walks in the valley and up to the surrounding heights
• The Ardre and the villages of the Tardenois nearby

Inhabitants

Brouillet has 68 inhabitants (as of 2023), a fall of 11.69 per cent since 2017. For lovers of good food and wine, the village is therefore above all a quiet stop on a drive through the countryside west of Reims, away from the main champagne routes.