The Mâconnais district is located in the south of the Burgundy wine region in France , west of the Saône river. It takes its name from the town of Mâcon . It is best known as a source of good value white wines made from the Chardonnay grape; the wines from Pouilly-Fuissé are particularly sought-after. Almost all the wine made in the Mâconnais is white wine. Chardonnay is the main grape grown in the district—in fact, there is a village of that name in the far north of the region. Some plantations of Gamay and Pinot noir are made into red and rosé Mâcon, making up no more than 30% of the total wine production. Gamay is grown in the Beaujolais cru of Moulin-à-Vent , which extends into the Mâconnais, but has little in common with the wines north of the border.
34-460: The geology is similar to that of the Côte d'Or , but the gentle relief means that vines are mixed with other forms of farming in most of the area. In the south the land rises up to form Mont de Pouilly and other limestone hills, covered in the alkaline clay that best suits Chardonnay. The villages of Vergisson, Solutré-Pouilly, Fuissé and Chaintré shelter at their feet, and are home to the best wines of
68-436: A court, a university, a military post, a bishopric, a stock exchange, a fair, a hospital, etc. The protests of the towns which had always fulfilled one of these functions and which were thus deprived of their court of appeal, their arsenal, their university or their fair, prevented this plan from being completely implemented. In some cases, modern regions share names with the historic provinces; their borders may cover roughly
102-477: A different city from the capital. Areas that were not part of the Kingdom of France, though they are currently parts of Metropolitan France : Partial display of historical provincial arms: On%C3%A9sime Reclus Onésime Reclus (22 September 1837 – 30 June 1916) was a French geographer who specialized in the relations between France and its colonies. In 1880 he coined the term " Francophonie " as
136-446: A hundred individual peoples (300 according to Flavius Josephus), some with very different customs. Julius Caesar called each of these independent states civitas (city, without the word in this case referring to the idea of town or village), some of which were subdivided into pagi . Many of the smaller Gallic peoples were clients of their neighbors, and therefore dependent on them, sometimes paying them tribute. These confederations,
170-543: A means of classification of peoples of the world, being determined by the language they all spoke. While this term did not appear in dictionaries until 1930, it has become more important since the late 20th century as part of conceptual rethinking of cultures and geography . Onésime was born as the middle of five sons of Jacques Reclus (1796–1882), a Protestant minister, and his wife. His brothers also became notable in their fields. His family had moved to Orthez from Sainte-Foy-la-Grande , where at least one of his brothers
204-404: A precise legal definition, clearly defined boundaries and codified administrative structures. The number of provinces, their organization and boundaries varied widely over the course of five centuries, and each was headed by a proconsul or propraetor . In addition to Provincia (Provence), which was already Roman, Caesar divided Gaul into three provinces: Aquitanica , Celtica and Belgica . Over
238-472: Is not recorded until after 850; from 926 the countship became hereditary. The last Count of Mâcon and of Vienne died in 1224 and the lands passed to his daughter, Alix de Bourgogne (Alice of Burgundy); when her husband died in 1239, she sold the Mâconnais to Louis IX of France . The 1435 Treaty of Arras saw Charles VII of France cede it to Philip, Duke of Burgundy, but in 1477 it reverted to France, upon
272-661: The names of many of the territorial subdivisions of the Ancien Régime refer to Gallic civitates . Before the French Revolution, France was made up of territorial divisions resulting from history, geography and settlement, which differed according to the different powers that were exercised there, with different categories such as metropolises, dioceses , duchies , baronies, governments, states, elections, generalities, intendances, parliaments, countries, bailliages, seneschaussées, etc. Each of these categories took
306-453: The night of 4 August , decided to establish a uniform division of the territory, the départements , and that this division would be the same for the different functions of the State: military, religious, fiscal, administrative, university, judicial, etc. The town chosen as the capital of each department would have to be the seat of each of these functions, and at the same time have a prefecture,
340-427: The "former provinces of France". The list below shows the major provinces of France at the time of their dissolution during the French Revolution. Capital cities are shown in parentheses. Bold indicates a city that was also the seat of a judicial and quasi-legislative body called either a parlement (not to be confused with a parliament ) or a conseil souverain (sovereign council). In some cases, this body met in
374-544: The 90 départements and their capital cities, although their ethnonyms have been replaced by names related to physical geography: rivers, mountains, coasts. Depending on their laws, customs and languages, the territory of the kingdom is divided into countries of written law (roughly south of a line from La Rochelle to Geneva) and countries of customary law (north of the same line). Each of these groups includes several parliaments, which are appeal courts whose jurisdictions form as many judicial provinces, and to which belong all
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#1732792011024408-533: The Duchy of Gascony disappeared in the 11th century, and the Duchy of Normandy was divided into two military governments. In modern times, the "thirty-six governments" corresponded to the provinces on which all the fiefs and arrière-fiefs depended, providing territorial districts for defense and marshaling, the raising of men-at-arms, the construction of squares, arsenals and castles, judges-at-arms, and therefore also all questions of nobility, armorial bearings, etc. At
442-603: The best-known of which are those of the Arverni , Aedui and Armoricans , formed a kind of province before Roman reorganization. The Gallic cities, with their territory and the name given to their chief town, became dioceses under the Lower Empire; their status as "mainmorte", having escaped the division of patrimonial domains, explains why they remained almost intact until the end of the Ancien Régime. These divisions were subsequently taken over and partly regrouped to form
476-488: The case, which causes confusion as to the borders of some provinces. Today, the term "province" is used to name the resulting regional areas, which retain a cultural and linguistic identity. Borrowed from the institutions of the Roman Empire , the word first appeared in the 15th century and has continued to spread, both in official documents and in popular or common usage. Whatever the century or dictionary consulted,
510-428: The concept of province with that of generality. The concepts do occasionally coincide, when the extent of a generality more or less overlaps that of an older territorial entity, but they are not synonymous. These are the fiefs that depend directly on the crown (duchies, counties and marches) and owe it military aid. In addition to the Duchy of France, which became part of the royal domain, the first six major fiefs have
544-515: The course of four centuries of Roman control, the number of provinces increased from three to eleven, due to both the expansion of the empire and the reduction in size of the original provinces: 1st and 2nd Germania , 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Lugdunensis , 1st and 2nd Aquitanica , 1st and 2nd Belgica , 1st and 2nd Narbonensis , Novempopulanie , Sequanorum , Viennensis , Alpes Cottiarum , Alpes Maritimae , Alpes Graiae et Poeninae . These provinces were subdivided into cities (civitas or civitates in
578-783: The death of duke Charles the Bold . Emperor Charles V definitively recognized the Mâconnais as French at the Treaty of Cambrai in 1529. After the fall of the Bastille in 1789, the mountain peasants of Mâconnais revolted. Many were executed by the urban militias of Mâcon, Cluny and Tournus after much brigandage. Mâconnais consists of the following appellations. The regional Burgundy appellations - Bourgogne , Bourgogne Aligoté , Coteaux Bourguignons , Bourgogne Passe-tout-grains , Crémant de Bourgogne , Bourgogne mousseux - may also be used for wine from this area. The following rules apply to
612-498: The definition of the word often remains vague, due to the coexistence of several territorial division systems under the Ancien Régime. Some geographers, even some of the most famous, such as Onésime Reclus , have widely criticised the idea of provinces and provincial identity, sometimes denying that the word covers any tangible reality. In fact, the many lists and maps showing the provinces of France are neither perfectly superimposable nor exactly comparable. The fact remains, however, that
646-657: The different wines from the Mâcon appellation: In 2010, the total Mâconnais vineyards covered 6,991 hectares (17,280 acres). Of this, 5,779.7 hectares (14,282 acres) of vineyard surface was in production for the specific appellations of the Mâconnais, and some 1,211 hectares (2,990 acres) for regional Burgundy appellations. In the Mâconnais appellations, 342 648 hectoliters of wine were produced, of which 316 725 hl of white wine and 25 933 of rosé and red wine. This corresponds to 45.7 million bottles of wine, of which 42.2 million bottles of white and 3.5 million bottles of red. The production
680-519: The end of the Ancien Régime, not counting overseas territories such as the French islands of America, Pondicherry, Mauritius or New France (a province from 1663 to 1763, when it was ceded to Great Britain and Spain), there were thirty-six regions with a governor in charge of defense, called governments. Each had its own nobility. Together with the regions attached to France since 1791, these thirty-six governments correspond to what are usually known today as
714-524: The generalités, then the départements, but replacing their former ethnic names (e.g. Poitou for the country of Pictons, Auvergne for the country of Arverni, Rouergue for the country of Ruteni , Périgord for country of Pétrocores, etc.) with a physical geographic name (giving respectively the départements of Vienne , Puy-de-Dôme , Aveyron , Dordogne , etc.). The Latin etymology of the term provincia gives us an idea of its original meaning: pro vincere , conquered in advance. Each of Gaul's Roman provinces had
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#1732792011024748-437: The late 20th century as part of conceptual rethinking by historians, geographers, anthropologists and others of cultures and geography. For instance, there has been study of the state of Louisiana, and especially the city of New Orleans, as places of strong French-language culture. Reclus continued to be interested in issues related to France and its colonies, publishing a book on France and Algeria in 1886. He married and had
782-423: The name of a province, without covering the same geographical area. For example, the jurisdiction of the parlement d'Artois did not correspond to the same territory as the gouvernement d'Artois or the intendance d'Artois. The Constituent Assembly of 1789 , having abolished all the rights and customs specific to the different regions (also known as privileges, such as those of the classes, nobility and clergy) during
816-483: The name of an ancient Gallic people, also given to the diocesan capital. Dioceses were made up of parishes , groups of inhabitants who could gather in the same church, whose names and boundaries have been preserved in the 36,000 French communes. Ecclesiastical districts, by virtue of their mainmortal status, are the oldest and most stable territorial circumscriptions, from late antiquity to the general reorganization of 1802. Today, these 130 or so districts are grouped into
850-552: The plural), the number of which rose from 33 to 113. Metropolises are territories under the jurisdiction of a metropolitan archbishop , also known as provinces because they originate from the Roman provinces administered by the first bishops after the fall of the Roman Empire. They are made up of the dioceses which, by the same process, succeeded the ancient civitas or romanized Gallic cities, and which almost always retained
884-706: The region. Mâcon was a major crossroads in Roman times, and grapes would have been brought by the Romans if they were not already cultivated by the Celts. Viticulture was further encouraged by local religious foundations; the province was dominated by the bishopric of Mâcon during the Dark Ages. The region formed the border between the Kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire from 843 to 1600 and grew rich on customs duties in that time. A secular Count of Mâcon
918-655: The return to the crown of a former fiefdom, such as the Duchy of Burgundy , which had been held by Hugues Capet's brother. Others, such as the Duchy of Savoy , Corsica , Comtat-Vénessin and the County of Nice , were acquired from the Empire or the Holy See. Unlike the ecclesiastical provinces, their extent varies over the course of history according to the possessions of their holders, or to political reorganizations. For example,
952-418: The royal jurisdictions, baillages (bailiwicks) and seneschaussées (seneschalties) . They are made up of several countries , each corresponding to a general custom, or even a particular custom corresponding to former vici that have retained local customs. For example, the seneschalty of Quercy is made up of five secondary bailiwicks, corresponding to five former vigueries . Some authors attempt to equate
986-482: The same territory. It's worth noting that the old Gallic states retained their names, their boundaries and a kind of moral existence in people's memories and affections until very recently. Neither the Romans, nor the Germans, nor feudalism, nor monarchy destroyed these enduring units; they can still be found in the provinces and countries of present-day France. Gaul was occupied by fifty-four main peoples and more than
1020-504: The title of peerage: Their holders were considered electors of the King of France, along with six other ecclesiastical peers: The number of grand fiefs varies with history (inheritances, confiscations, conquests, losses, treaties) and increases with the definitive attachment of the County of Provence , the Duchy of Anjou , the Duchy of Burgundy , the Duchy of Brittany , the Duchy of Lorraine , and so on. Some of these provinces were simply
1054-599: Was a member of the Société de Géographie . He was a contributor to the journal Tour du monde. In 1880 Reclus coined the term " Francophonie " as a means of classification of peoples of the world who spoke the French language. He believed that people were connected by their language and culture, for instance, the continental French as well as French speakers in the Caribbean and Africa. While this term did not appear in dictionaries until 1930, it has become more important since
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1088-693: Was born. His next older and younger brothers both became geographers: Reclus became a geographer. He was particularly interested in France and its colonies, which was the subject of his first book, published in 1873. By this time, France's colonies in Africa were more important than those in the Caribbean, and it had lost or given up those in North America by the early 19th century. But its history of deep involvement in colonial development in North America continued to influence its politics. From 1869, Reclus
1122-751: Was distributed as follows: 46°20′N 4°44′E / 46.34°N 4.74°E / 46.34; 4.74 Provinces of France Under the Ancien Régime , the Kingdom of France was subdivided in multiple different ways (judicial, military, ecclesiastical, etc.) into several administrative units, until the National Constituent Assembly adopted a more uniform division into departments ( départements ) and districts in late 1789. The provinces continued to exist administratively until 21 September 1791. The country
1156-409: Was subdivided ecclesiastically into dioceses, judicially into généralités , militarily into general governments. None of these entities was called "province" by their contemporaries. However, later interpretations confused the term of "general government" (a military division) with that of a cultural province, since the general governments often used the names and borders of a province. It was not always
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