The Boulay family has held land in Sancerre for about 600 years (give or take a few). Today, of the 9 hectares the estate owns, 8 of them are in the sloped vineyards of Chavignol.
Indeed, if you taste a similarity among the wines of Gérard Boulay, Edmond Vatan, the Cotats and Thomas-Labaille, it is because they're all neighbors - joined together by the superlative Chablis-like Kimmeridgean soil that gives the wines of Chavignol their distinct mineral-inflected clarity and precision.
Gérard Boulay works the soils manually - within vineyards like Monts Damnés there really isn't any other option, and the inclines can be fairly severe. Everything, including the harvesting, is done by hand. The youngest vines here were planted by Mr. Boulay himself back in 1972 - the older vines, many of them used to create the Comtesse bottling, were planted back in 1958.