The Mâconnais wine-producing country lies to the west of the Saône, a strip hardly 20km wide, stretching from Mâcon to Tournus. The land rises sharply into steep little hills and valleys, at its prettiest in the south, where the region's best white wines come from, around the villages of POUILLY, VINZELLES, PRISSÉ and FUISSÉ, at the last of which, should you yearn for rustic rest, the Hôtel La Vigne Blanche (tel 03.85.35.60.50, fax 03.85.35.67.13; €40–55), will provide just the setting you're looking for, along with good regional cooking in its restaurant (menus from €13).Directly above these villages rises the distinctive and precipitous 500-metre rock of Solutré, which in prehistoric times – around 20,000 BC – seems to have served as some kind of ambush site for hunters after migrating animals: the bones of 100,000 horses have been found in the soil beneath the rock, along with mammoth, bison and reindeer carcasses. The history and results of the excavations are displayed in a museum at the foot of the rock, the Musée Départemental de Préhistoire (daily except Tues: Feb–May, Oct & Nov 10am–noon & 2–5pm; June–Sept 10am–7pm; €4.80). A steep path climbs to the top of the rock, where you get a superb view as far as Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn on a clear day, as well as looking down on the huddled roofs of SOLUTRÉ-POUILLY, the slopes beneath you covered with the vines of the Chardonnay grape that makes the exquisite greenish Pouilly-Fuissé wine. The area is at its most enchanting in early spring when the earth still shows its terre-cuite colours, punctuated by bursts of white cherry blossom and the blue drift of bonfire smoke from prunings amid the neatly staked rows of vines. Aside from the sheer pleasure of wandering about in such reposeful landscapes – not so, however, if you're trying to tackle this very hilly country on a bike – there are some specific places to make for. One such is the sleepy hamlet of ST-POINT, where the poet Lamartine spent much of his life in the little medieval Château de St-Point, now a museum dedicated to his memory (March to mid-Nov Mon & Thurs–Sat 10am–noon & 3–6pm, Sun 3–6pm; €4.80), next to the Romanesque church where he's buried. If you continue up the road behind the Château you come to an utterly rural farm where you can buy goat's cheese. There is a campsite by the Lac St-Point (tel 03.85.50.52.31; April–Oct).
Pages in section ‘Maconnais’: Cluny, Taizé.
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