The Maconnais wine region in the south of Burgundy is centered around – and named after – the provincial town of Macon. The area produces a considerable quantity of wine, specializing in white wines made from Chardonnay and a smaller number of red wines made from Pinot Noir and Gamay.
Unlike the Cote d'Or to the north, where a densely planted strip of vineyards runs roughly north–south through the countryside, the vineyards of the Maconnais are more sparsely planted and interspersed with land dedicated to other forms of agriculture. The landscape here is one of rolling limestone hills, bordered in the east by the Saone river as it flows south to meet the Rhone just outside Lyon. The Maconnais climate shows signs of its proximity to the Rhone Valley, with warmer-than-average temperatures, lower rainfall and – perhaps most significantly – less risk of vine-damaging spring frosts.
(© BIVB / DR)
The southern end of the Maconnais overlaps slightly with the northern edge of Beaujolais – itself officially part of the Burgundy wine region, but often treated as separate.
The Macon title covers white, red and rose wines from across the area. A number of communes within the appellation's catchment area have been recognized as sources of higher-quality wines and may append their names to that of the appellation; for example, Macon Lugny.
Macon-Villages is a title reserved for white wines, while Primeur and Nouveau are suffixes that may be added to fresh-styled rose and white wines released shortly after harvest. To be exact, the law stipulates that these wines may be released 38 days before the third Thursday of November in the year of harvest. The term Superieur may be added to the titles of red or white Macon wines, denoting their slightly higher alcohol level (created by specific quality-focused production techniques).
In 1999, Vire and Clesse, formerly named villages of the Macon title, were granted their own appellation, Vire-Clesse, specifically for their high-quality Chardonnay-based wines. The new title joined the longer-established white wine appellations of Pouilly-Vinzelles, Pouilly-Loche and Pouilly-Fuisse, and the larger Saint-Veran appellation – introduced in 1971 to cover many wines previously labeled as Beaujolais Blanc.
