Viré-Clessé
Viré-Clessé is a relatively new appellation in the Maconnais region of southern Burgundy
And the most recently created of the region’s communal titles. Viré-Clessé wines are produced exclusively from the Chardonnay grape variety.
These are similar in style to those made by their immediate neighbors around Solutré-Pouilly (if slightly drier), being the product of a moderate climate and soils with a high proportion of limestone and clay. The classic Viré-Clessé wine offers aromas of acacia flowers and exotic fruits, with the best examples having a mineral, flinty undertone known as pierre a fussil (gunflint).
Created in February 1999 and retrospectively applicable to the 1998 vintage, the Viré-Clessé appellation was intended to single out a small area not covered by the more-prestigious Pouilly titles, but capable of producing white wines of quality. It replaced the former appellations Mâcon-Clessé and Mâcon-Viré.
The appellation covers not just the communes of Viré and Clessé, but also their immediate neighbors, Laize and Montbellet. The catchment area of the title sits midway between the towns of Tournus in the north and Mâcon in the south, with its eastern side bound by the Saône river.
The appellation’s laws permitted only the driest of white wines (those with less than 3 grams per liter of residual sugar), which precluded several local producers from claiming the appellation for their traditional wine styles. Wines that are anything less than bone dry must be labeled as Macon or Macon Villages. With their low levels of residual sugar, Viré-Clessé wines are as dry as the famously austere wines of Chablis.