When I first visited muscadet country in the early 2000s, things were looking bleak for producers of the once all-conquering local seafood-friendly dry white. Years of unchecked overproduction and a rather cavalier approach to quality in these Atlantic-buffeted vineyards around the mouth of the Loire estuary – not to mention the emergence of a wave of exuberantly fruity new rivals from the new world – had seen sales dwindle alarmingly. Few of the producers I saw were able to puncture the general air of pessimism and doom.
The shining exception on that trip was Guy Bossard, the owner of a small biodynamically farmed domaine called Domaine de l’Écu. Bossard, at the time an energetic 50-year-old, was a bubbling stream of ideas, but his thrilling dry white wines were every bit as eloquent. As resonant, precise and varied as the best white burgundy, and at a fraction of the price, they were a challenge to all my preconceived ideas about muscadet.
