As their fathers were winegrowers and neighbors, they grew up together in the middle of the vines and never left each other since. Here is the story of a friendship that has been existing for almost 60 years.
Gilles Musset and Serge Roullier grew in La Pommeraye*, a town located in the south of Anjou where the rumor said that hundreds of now disappeared apple trees were planted many decades before their birth (*meaning: apple orchard). Both of them were sons of winegrowers, sat next to each other at school, neighbors and friends in real life.
When his studies were over in 1972, Serge Roullier joined his father’s winery called Domaine du Pélican; this family wine estate founded in 1920 and farming 14 hectares of vineyards, was specialized in producing wine in bulk and bottle made of Gamay noir, Grolleau, or Chenin.
On another side, Gilles founded his family Domaine du Chaumier wine estate in 1984 with his mother. They produced Crémant de Loire, Anjou Coteaux de la Loire, or medium rosé. As a connoisseur of Cabernet Franc, Gilles discovered his passion for vinification at that time.
Serge and Gilles were used to help each other and provided determining mutual support when both of their vineyards dramatically suffered from the frost in 1991.
At that time, they started to have grand plans for their wines and began to really consider the possibility to work together.
When their parents retired in 1993, the two friends merged their family boutique wine estates and founded Vignoble Musset-Roullier with Lydia Musset, Gilles’s wife. Their goal was obvious: let their passion, knowledge and skills express at best, in order to produce real gems to uncork served at prestigious tables. More ambitious than their parents who didn’t look for complexity, Gilles Musset and Serge Roullier wanted to produce terroir-driven and handcrafted wines, tasty, refined, and precise from the first sip.
To achieve at best this purpose, they started by dividing the tasks between them; to Serge, the mastery of vines and grapes, to Gilles the meticulousness of vinification.
