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A unique landscape composition

Its unique landscape is composed, at its heart, of incredible rocks with harmoniously sculpted silhouettes: the Solutré and Vergisson peaks. The aptly named "Mont" of Pouilly offers a more rounded and gentler relief. These magnificent spurs overlook the renowned vineyards of the Grand Cru wines of Pouilly-Fuissé and Saint-Véran, the typical wine-growing villages of the Mâconnais region, the hedged farmland , and the forest . This prestigious heritage site forms a spectacular and unusual location, a place inhabited by humankind for at least 55,000 years, and the emblem of an entire region.

First, it is the mineral elements that catch the eye. These two rocks , majestic promontories resulting from the uplift of tectonic plates, are the identifiable landmarks of this grand landscape, viewpoints that invite contemplation.

Man is omnipresent, inseparable from the history of this landscape that he has shaped, a moving landscape on the scale of time, extremely alive in the present moment. Looking closely, everything gives the feeling of a very maintained, very gardened, very worked space.

Here, the meadows of the bocage have square and rectangular shapes, their edges marked by lines of ditches, hedges of trees and shrubs.

There, the small vineyard plots with their varied geometric shapes fit together like a set of pentomino puzzles. The numerous paths, or avenues, that border these plots, the dry stone walls that surround them to form enclosures, or further emphasize the linear features and the contours, reinforce this landscape puzzle.

A living landscape

The straight segments of the vine fill in the shapes of this puzzle. The rows, following the steepest slope , are rhythmically marked by the stakes. The galvanized trellis wires, reflecting the sun's rays, reinforce this structure, making it radiate.

Occasionally, amidst the geometry and purity of the lines, a solitary tree—a fruit tree, an almond tree, a St. Lucie cherry tree, or a cadole (a traditional stone hut)—marks a corner or intersection. Increasingly rare, these elements of local heritage are threatened with extinction.

Limestone grasslands cover the steep slopes of the hillsides , near their summits . This rich and valuable environment is recognized as being of European importance through its Natura 2000 designation . However, its natural evolution, described as climax , is a return to shrub and then tree cover. Humans have managed to maintain the open landscape to preserve this unique and precious biotope .

There is so much diversity in this small territory. Combining the mineral and the vegetal, everything here is a study in contrasts and paradoxes : the weather and the seasons, the viewpoints and perspectives. This place is never the same, from one hour to the next, from one day to the next, from one season to the next. The light of day, dawn, dusk, or night, the cloud cover, the colors of the leaves, the snow, the frost, the shadows… all these parameters alter its appearance and perception . They make it unique each day , magical, sometimes personifying it , revealing it now as angry, now as smiling, now as asleep.

The emotion that this landscape evokes in each of us is at once universal , intrinsic, but also intimately linked to our personal feelings, our own identity, our history, and our memories . A sound, a smell, a touch, then awaken conscious and unconscious feelings .

For all these reasons, this site and its landscape features have been the subject of successive protection and preservation measures since the beginning of the ^20th century .