Vignobles Gilbert Chon is rooted in Saint-Julien-de-Concelles, the village where beurre blanc was born (the original recipe calls for Muscadet!), and where oysters, the Atlantic, and the wines that make sense of both define the place. The family's own story starts later, and further east: fleeing Burgundy after the catastrophic frost of 1709, Mathurin Chon settled near Nantes, where Burgundian Melon, having survived that same frost other varieties did not, was fast becoming the region's defining variety. The estate sits on the edge of the Goulaine Marshes, close enough to the Atlantic to taste the salt on the wind, with schist and decomposed granite soils that send roots several meters down before finding what they need. As the appellation contracts ahead of the Cru system, the estate has chosen to shed marginal parcels rather than chase volume, a calculus led today by Arnaud (son-in-law to the family, and its de facto standard-bearer.) David Schildknecht has praised the results as offering exceptional quality and value: impeccably clean, vividly expressive Muscadet drawn from a patchwork of crus in a popular, little-understood appellation.