The Talmard family is fortunate enough to own some of the greatest vineyards above the village of Mâcon-Uchizy. Paul Talmard is from a farming family and cultivates 200 hectares of cereals. The first vines were planted in 1958 and the grapes used to be delivered to the local co-operatives. He felt he could produce better wines himself, so in 1973 took the brave decision to go it alone. The wines have met with great success and the vineyard has now increased to 16 hectares. The wine is produced by cool fermentation in stainless-steel tanks at 18º–20ºC. The Mâcon lies in the southern reaches of France's Burgundy region. The unique chalky, limestone soils that Chardonnay craves are the same in both areas. But as much as Chardonnay is smitten with this limestone dirt, red grapes there disdain the stuff and only 17 percent of Mâcon wines are red. Some argue even that is too much. Mâcon wines are labeled in ascending order of quality as: Mâcon, Mâcon Superieure and Mâcon Villages with the hyphenated name of one of 43 villages. The Domaine Talmard Mâcon-Chardonnay has the lucky coincidence of having Chardonnay as the name of the village where the grapes were grown, as well as it being the grape used to make the wines.