Does anyone have any knowledge or experience with the Chateau Gillette Vin Sec wines made in the 1950s? The 1958 is available at auction and is of interest as it is birth year wine for me.
For example, does anyone know if these dry wines spent 20+ years in tank (like the Creme de Tete) before being bottled?
All info gratefully received.
I have reached out to Gonet-Medeville to see what they know, but have no heard back from them.
I can’t seem to find very much online. I did found this;
“There used to be different levels of Gilette — dry, demi-sec, demi-doux, doux, and crême de tête. G was the dry wine but made in only three vintages, 1954, 1956, 1958. (This gave the idea to Bernard Lur Saluces to produce the dry Ygrec at Château d’Yquem.) The last vintage of the other cuvées was 1962.”
I can see there is a Yohang Castaing article from Feb 2024 in TWA about Ch. Gilette. But since I am not a subscriber, I have no idea if the dry wines were included in the tasting or not.
TIA
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Unfortunately Castaing’s article doesn’t discuss the dry wines with any detail and I don’t see any TNs for the dry Gilettes in the TWA database. The color in your picture looks great, though.
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Thnx Mike, pretty much as expected I guess!
If that really is the color of wine you are getting, I would definitely take a flyer on it. Especially as a birth year wine.
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The auction house uses a white box for the photography of the bottles. The photographed colours are usually pretty accurate in my experience so take a flyer I will !
There are in fact 5 bottles on offer, here are the photos. You can see one bottle is quite a lot darker.
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I’d make the same decision, as even the dark bottle has good color for a wine of that age. Good luck, I hope you win the lot at a decent price and that no one who reads this thread competes with you for it.
I am happy to report I have received a reply from Xavier Gonet Medeville. Here is what he said (courtesy of Google translate);
“We are delighted to answer your question:
This wine was produced by our château. The vintage is excellent, coming from a carefully selected harvest of botrytis cinerea from the Sémillon grape variety at Château Gilette in Sauternes.
It has a nose reminiscent of Sauternes with a warm, dry white wine palate.
Perfectly suited to seafood such as lobster.
Always very good and very powerful.
This is a rare wine that we can no longer produce because French regulations prohibit us from producing wines with an alcohol content exceeding 16%.
Enjoy your tasting.”
I wonder how high the alcohol content actually is (the NZ strip label says 14.5% but must be 16+ %)? It sounds like they picked fully botrytised grapes and fermented them dry. He appears confident it will still be drinking well.
Fingers crossed on the bidding and the drinking.
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They hold up extraordinarily well.
