Château Gilette: Tasting & Drinking
Is there a more distinctive domaine in Sauternes than Château Gilette? The only possible answer to this question is a firm and resounding ‘no’. This estate is unique. What began as a half-accidental response to the bottom falling out of the market for their wines six or seven decades ago is what today makes Château Gilette very special indeed. You only have to take a tour of their bottle cellar, and inspect the bins full of bottles from the 1980s and 1970s, to understand this. This is not merely a library of old vintages like you might find at Château Margaux or Château Latour, but simply stock not yet deemed ready for sale. We have here a family, and an estate, that marches to the beat of its own drum, and it beats eighteen years behind everybody else in the appellation.
I have alluded in my profile to comments from some authors suggesting that the wines of Château Gilette do not really develop in vat, and they should perhaps instead step into line with the rest of the world, bottling wines after a year or two, and then if they so wish cellaring them for ten, twenty or thirty years before sale.
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