Increasing quote level while composing emails with Vim

Dear mutt users,
As many MUAs do not properly increase quote levels while replying to
emails I would like, in some cases, to select part of the text and
increase the quote level in Vim. 
Something similar I do to format a text to the right number of colums by
selecting the text (Visual mode in Vim) and simply use the "gq"
argument. 
Would it be possible to do something similar and add at the beginning of
each selected line a "> ".
I know that this is not strictly mutt related, but I am sure that many
mutt users should be also annoied by MUAs not increasing the quote
level. Mutt can so nicely color each quote level differently to improve
the readability of emails.
Best wishes and thanks for the tips,
Nicola