Guilbaud Frères: Tasting & Drinking
The wines of Guilbaud Frères span the spectrum of quality, from entry-level wines with a rather commercial twist, the lean fruit of melon de Bourgogne struggling against the scents of aromatic yeast, up to more interesting wines. There is no apparent desire here to take advantage of the recently developed crus communaux, and so the range falls short of the quality level that is being achieved elsewhere in the Muscadet Sèvre et Maine appellation, in Clisson and Gorges, for example. I sense with such a huge throughput of wine, committing some vats to two, three, four or even more years of lees aging would be a problem for Pascal and his team. Instead, they choose to experiment with the use of foudres, subtly done in the case of Château de la Pingossière, probably the most interesting wine in the range for my palate, and with a more overt and personally less desirable expression of wood in Clos du Pont. Long aging in bottle tempers the oak influence somewhat though, and this latter wine shows an attractive character by ten years of age.
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