The vines
Location
The Clos des Vignes du Maynes is a 7 hectare enclosure with a full east exposure is located in Cruzille (AOC Mâcon Cruzille), in Saône-et-Loire, 10 km southwest of Tournus.
The landscape is polycultural, and teeming with wildlife, with forests increasing in size. The Clos and its surrounding woods of de Buis and de la Fà were also important sites during the French Resistance, serving as strongholds for the Maquis between 1942 and 1945 .
Terroirs
The Clos des Vignes du Maynes rests on a Bathonian-type base (around twenty million years old, mid-Jurassic, end of the Mesozoic) in an area where rocks of different origins coexist, including two main ones:
- Middle Bathonian: oolitic limestones and entroques limestones
- Upper Bathonian: Pholadomyes marls (marine fossils)
The soil is made up of clay-limestone soil, and shallow at only 0.25 to 0.40m.
The climate is a warm and oceanic, without a dry season according to the Köppen-Geiger classification. The rainfall is significant even in the driest months. Over the year, the average temperature is 11.4°C and rainfall is 788.9 mm.
The main grape varieties
The domain is located in the AOC Mâcon Cruzille, overseeing a total production area of 31ha of Chardonnay and 10.4 ha of Gamay. The domaine itself has 2.49ha of Chardonnay and 2.56 of Gamay, with the remainder (2.64 ha) being Pinot Noir in the Burgundy appellation. We can therefore see that we are in an atypical area, not completely representative of Mâcon viticulture, as we only have one-third of all the grape varieties authorized in the appellation zone.
Cultivation method
The vines are worked biodynamically (certified by DEMETER) and some plots are additionally plowed on horseback by our winegrower friends Caroline and Thibaut Pariset.
The entire Clos is trellised with 4 wires. All vines are pruned in the Guyot Poussard method to respect sap flow and minimise pruning wounds, and the whites are also additionally arc trained. All grapes are harvested by hand.