Domaine Claude Branger

A 4^rd generation domaine, Claude Branger started with his father, working “derrière le cheval” on 7 hectares. He now owns 26.5 hectares of vines and his son, Sébastien, who arrived officially at the domain in 2007, works right beside him harvesting by hand— and making ripe but very dry Muscadets.

Claude was an early member of Terra Vitis, an organization that sets guidelines for sustainable farming. Subsequently, Sébastien embarked the domain on the road to full-fledged organic farming and by 2019. They were fully certified.

The father and son team prunes its vines for low yields, harvests by hand (a rarity in this land of machine harvesting), and lets its wine rest on the lees until bottling, which is done without fining and with a light filtration—the classic sur lie technique. It’s this technique that gives good Muscadet wine its freshness and lift. There are wines of revelation made here, wines that are soft yet shockingly vigorous, imbued with scents of bread, lemon freshness, and sea salt minerality—a palette of aromas that in the better renditions follows through with flavor intensity and length. This is wine of the north Atlantic coast, the product of Brittany’s great shelf of granite. Good Muscadet is one of the best white wine values in the world.