Château de l'Oiselinière

The Château de l’Oiselinière is a historic wine estate located in the commune of Gorges, in the Loire-Atlantique department of the Pays de la Loire region in western France. It lies in the heart of the Muscadet Sèvre-et-Maine vineyard, overlooking the Sèvre Nantaise, about 10 minutes from Clisson and 30 minutes from Nantes.

The seigneury of l’Oiselinière is documented as early as 1335 and originally depended on the lords of Clisson and Le Pallet. Over 643 years it changed hands only four times: Maurice le Meignen, then (by marriage) Claude Grézeau in 1460, Jean Goulet de la Fosse of Nantes in 1613, Louis de La Bourdonnaye in 1658, and finally the ancestors of the Aulanier family in 1767. A parchment lease of 1635 is the earliest known document mentioning the planting of “vignes blanches de Muscadet” on the estate (“Les Grands Gâts”), making it a key site in the history of Muscadet.

During the Second World War the property was an important centre of Resistance activity; the Aulanier family paid a heavy price. General Louis-Alexandre Audibert, a resistant and deputy, lived there from 1946 to 1955. In 2006 the estate was acquired by Georges Verdier and his family, the present owners.

The main residence is an Italian-style villa built between 1822 and 1835 around a courtyard of outbuildings constructed in 1800 by Jean-Baptiste Bertrand-Geslin (future mayor of Nantes). It is accompanied by an orangery and the “Galerie des Illustres”, a row of six brick niches containing busts of famous men (Olivier de Clisson, Condé, Duquesne, Jean Bart, Bayard and Du Guesclin), probably sculpted by Debay. The park was laid out between 1807 and 1809.

The façades and roofs of the villa and outbuildings, together with the orangery, were inscribed as a Monument historique on 14 November 1997. The estate today comprises roughly 40 hectares of vines and 40 hectares of park, meadows and protected woodland. It produces Muscadet and welcomes visitors for guided walks (“Promenade du Général”), tastings, guest accommodation and receptions in the orangery.