The estate

The Château Estate comprises 12 hectares of vines located in both the Burgundy and Beaujolais wine regions. Chardonnay grapes produce the celebrated Pouilly-Fuissé and Saint-Véran wines as well as the Crémant de Bourgogne sparkling wine. The Gamay grape variety is the basis for Mâcon red wines, Beaujolais-Villages reds, Rosé wines and our famous Rose Eternelle – a sparkling rosé that’s full of surprises!

In Roman times, Chasselas was a stop-over on the road from Lutèce (Paris) to Ludgunum (Lyons). The village also gave its name to a well-known variety of grape. The Lords of Chasselas began the construction of the Château in 1325. Over the course of time, it changed hands more than 12 times. It lay derelict for a considerable time until it was brought back from the brink in the 1970s, with the speed of progress having gathered pace since 1999 (under the current owners).

Jean-Marc Veyron la Croix and Jacky Martinon are first and foremost ardent fans of Wine and Wine-growing. Wine-making is the fruit of an exacting process subject to the vagaries of Mother Nature. Every day, the crucial ingredients of hard work, innate talent, the ability to innovate and a readiness to strike out on new paths must be blended together in just the right proportion in order to create a first-class product.

The earliest mention of the Veyron la Croix family (in the person of a merchant called Claude) dates from the 16th century and can be traced to the area around Saint-Etienne de St-Geoirs (Dauphiné). The family was of some note in the local area and its members upheld a very long tradition of service in the military. However, the family didn’t have a single wine-maker until Jean-Marc !

Born into a family wine-making tradition that stretched back several generations, Jacky Martinon was very close to his grandparents on his mother’s side. His grandfather Julien Faure passed his know-how on to him,  teaching him how to tend the vineyard and instructing him in the art of wine-making against the backdrop of the stunning Pays des Pierres Dorées (the land of the golden stones) region.