Address: Place du Village Solutré-Pouilly 71960 France
Phone: +33 03 85 35 83 83
Website: www.pouilly-fuisse.net
Sunday : From March to December 14h30 -19h00
Tuesday to Saturday: From April to October 10:00 -12:00 & 14:00 – 19:00
From November to March 09:00 – 12:00 & 14:00 to 18:00

 
A place to taste and purchase, L’Atrium is also the place to find information on all the producers, and practical aspects such as food, lodging, nature or cultural tourism in southern Burgundy, about 10 km west of Mâcon. On the village square of Solutré, the Pouilly-Fuissé Growers Association has created “L’Atrium” : an invitation to taste the five “Terroirs” of Pouilly-Fuissé, as well as to discover the villages and the producers. If Chardonnay is the unique grape variety of the Pouilly-Fuissé vineyard, there are many “Terroirs” expressions. This is the reason why they decided to provide the Atrium’s customers with a full range of various Pouilly-Fuissé: a selection of what each vintage has best to offer, under the label of the Growers Association. In addidtion to this educational showcase, the visitors can buy – by box or by the bottle – wines from over 50 private domains.
 

The Pouilly-Fuissé vineyards cover a narrow band of land with a surface area of around 740 hectares. The villages of Chaintré, Fuissé, Solutré-Pouilly and Vergisson have been the only places authorized to produce the Appellation ever since it was created in 1936. In fact, its “borders” were irrevocably fixed at that time to safeguard its unique character and authenticity.

Set exclusively on hillsides, the vineyards grow only a single grape: Chardonnay, the grape used in all the great white wines of Burgundy. The high plantation density, at around 10,000 vines per hectare, means that the vines can be made to “suffer” and produce only small bunches of grapes containing small amounts of very concentrated juice.

Here, the native soil is Burgundian, but the climat continues to benefit from the Mediterranean influences wafting up the Rhône corridor. The efforts made by growers from the outset have ensured that the reputation of Pouilly-Fuissé has grown steadily, allowing them to invest on a large scale in, eg, new vat houses offering enhanced hygiene, pneumatic pressing and better-controlled fermentation temperatures, analytic monitoring of vintages and more stringent requirements as regards the quality of cask woods.

Although the technical level has increased considerably, the personalization of vintages has largely remained a family affair, as 90% of the grapes grown in the Appellation area are made into wine on individual estates. Each grower considers that welcoming consumers is a priority, and visitors from outside France in particular were quick to spot this, so that Pouilly-Fuissé is the most widely exported of Burgundy’s wines!