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Mâconnais

It is too long since I last visited the vineyards of Mâcon. My memories of my time there are fleeting, brief recollections of moments long past. A glimpse of a road sign for Mâcon itself, an impromptu tasting at a long-forgotten domaine, rolling hillsides and the occasional towering outcrop of rock. Memories of the wines are perhaps more easily recalled, for they can be delicious and very good value. That has certainly been my experience, anyway; this is certainly a region worth exploring in some detail.

History

In my introduction to this guide to Burgundy I alluded to the region's rich heritage of viticulture, stretching back more than a millennium, contrasting it especially with Bordeaux which is largely a much more recent creation. One exception to this rather sweeping statement about Bordeaux is of course St Emilion, where names such as Figeac and Ausone hark back to the poets Figeacus and Ausonius, scholarly Romans with a taste for viticulture. Here in Mâconnais we can see, however, that Bordeaux does not lay sole claim to Ausonius; during his life he wrote of many more distant regions, drawing particular attention to the wines of Mâcon. Clearly these are ancient vineyards, to match any found in St Emilion or the Côte d'Or.

In parallel with those more famous vines just beyond the Côte Chalonnaise, the vineyards around Mâcon were largely established and consolidated not by Roman invaders or settlers but by the ecclesiastical institutions that dominated these landscapes during the 11th and 12th centuries. In particular the Cistercian order based at Cluny were active here as well as on the Côte d'Or. What might be regarded as Mâcon's golden era came many hundreds of years later though, during the 17th century. At this time the wines were often sold in Paris, a ready market although perhaps not an obvious one, the journey from Mâcon to the capital city being lengthy and arduous. It is said that a local grower named Claude Brosse was the man responsible for opening this lucrative market, having journeyed from Mâcon to Versailles, a trek which occupied 33 days of his life, taking along with him two barrels of his wine. Legend has it that he gained the attention of the Louis XIV purely on the basis of his huge stature, a stroke of luck that reputedly afforded him the opportunity to show his wines, which were naturally received with rapture.

There is a more hard-headed view of course, a view that suggests Paris was a market broached through necessity rather than good luck. Indeed, it may well have been forced upon them by vinous nepotism, as exports to other lucrative markets were blocked by authorities in Dijon and Chalons, who obviously favoured the wines of the Côte d'Or, and in Lyon, who blocked the gateway to the Rhône. And so the wines undertook the journey to Paris, moving largely by canal and by river, travelling across land when moving from one waterway to the next. Barrels were often damaged, wine lost or even consumed as payment, this situation persisting until railways arrived in the mid-19th century.

Today such transport difficulties have long since evaporated, as indeed have many of the vines; after phylloxera only the most profitable vineyards were replanted, and huge swathes of vines all over Burgundy, Mâcon included, were lost forever. The vineyards today cover perhaps one-third of the area documented during the 18th century, and they are largely white whereas once they were red. Fewer vineyards, ease of transport and the dominance of saleable Chardonnay over the previously prevalent Gamay does not, however, mean the vignerons of the modern Mâconnais are free of commercial problems. The wines suffer as they, like many wines of generic appellations in Burgundy, or Bordeaux, or the Rhône, dwell in the shadows cast by more prestigious appellations which generate much more interest, more column inches, more opinion and thus have many more eager buyers. One or two famous appellations such as Pouilly-Fuissé or St-Véran might buck the trend, maintaining some degree of recognition and reputation, as do one or two well-regarded growers, but looking at the broad picture we are in a Burgundy backwater here, where many growers are polyculturists, just as interested in tending to their fields of potatoes and asparagus as they are their vines. Marginal profits mean little room for investment, and there is naturally a tendency to reduce labour costs with mechanisation. On the Côte d'Or you will not have to look too long before you spot a horse-drawn plough in the vineyard, and workers tending to the vines by hand. Here in the Mâconnais, although there are exceptions, you are more likely to espy specialised tractors trundling along, ready to plough, prune or harvest as required.

Climate and Terroir

We are once more a little further south here, the climate therefore a little more temperate, but by no means a sure bet. Frost is always a threat early on in the season, and there is no less rain here than many other of France's viticultural regions. The topography is a little like that found to the west of the Côte d'Or, a series of rolling hills offering numerous slopes, and naturally the vines tend to be clustered on the more favourable inclines which have good exposure to the sun. In some areas the bedrock has lifted and erupted into tall and craggy outcrops of Jurassic rock; resistant to weathering, each one makes a striking vision, with the jagged outlines of Solutré perhaps the best recognised. Underfoot the bedrock and soils may, in some places at least, resemble those found in the Côte d'Or, though naturally over such a large area he soils are very varied. The region stretches up to 35 km from north to south, and 15 km east to west, and it may feature clay, limestone, granite or sand.

Appellations

Clearly Mâcon, whether red or white, is the most obviously associated appellation, but there are more noteworthy names tied to individual villages which may offer good value and quality, such as the aforementioned Pouilly-Fuissé, and equally there are large quantities of more anonymous wines produced, this region being responsible for a large proportion of Burgundy's annual output of generic wines, including Bourgogne Aligoté, Bourgogne Blanc and Rouge, Crémant de Bourgogne and similar. It is of course the former, the individual villages with a track record of quality, that will interest us most. Perhaps surprisingly the Mâcon village named Chardonnay, which naturally stakes a claim as the 'birthplace' of the vine of the same name, is not one of them.

The first is Fuissé, the best known village of the Pouilly region almost at the southern-most tip of the appellation. Here the leading villages may append their name to the region in question, so as well as Pouilly-Fuissé we also have Pouilly-Loché and Pouilly-Vinzelles. These appellations have all suffered in the past, as some growers and co-operatives have followed the path of early harvest, high yields and heavy manipulation, producing wines that were thin, unripe and sulphurous but which were sold on name alone. Nevertheless, from the right source, these can be very good bottles, and the same can be said for Viré-Clessé.

St-Véran, meanwhile, is absolutely the last outpost of the Mâconnais before we enter Beaujolais country. The appellation is centred around the village of St-Verand, curiously the final 'd' seemingly lost in the translation somewhere. There are also good wines to be found here, as there are around Davayé and Prissé, the former the source of one of the most delicious bottles of white Mâcon - from Domaine de Deux Roches - that I have ever had the pleasure to consume. But as with all Burgundy, we should not focus too much on appellations or towns; it is producer that matters most, and a bottle of straight Mâcon might have just as much promise as a Pouilly-Fuissé - or indeed as some wines from the villages of the Côte d'Or. In fact, as is the case with so many inappropriately disregarded and overlooked appellations - be it the crus of Beaujolais, the sparkling wines of Limoux or the esoteric wines of the Jura - there are producers here turning out fantastic and distinctive wines that should be sought alongside those of the Côte d'Or, not as half-hearted replacements. Names such as Jean Thévenet (renowned not only for his dry Chardonnays, but also a finely sweet botrytised version), Paul Talmard, Olivier Merlin or André Bonhomme spring immediately to mind. More details are given in the box, above.

• Part 16: Beaujolais