Description
Gaja, Barbaresco
The Gaja family’s winemaking history in Piedmont dates to 1859. When Angelo Gaja, now in his eighties, came aboard in 1961, working alongside his father, Giovanni, the estate had already produced some acclaimed bottlings. But Angelo truly took the company supersonic. He made a variety of changes, controversial at the time, to create riper, cleaner, less forbiddingly tannic expressions of Barbaresco’s Nebbiolo grape. For one, he pruned vines more severely to reduce yields and increase fruit concentration. For another, he began experimenting with aging wines in smaller, newer oak barrels, which helped to deepen the (usually light) color of the wines and lend them polish. This sleeker, more accessible style of Barbaresco wasn’t favorably received by many Piedmontese traditionalists, but it was embraced wholeheartedly by the broader wine community.
Now, as the reins are being taken by Angelo Gaja’s children, especially his daughter, Gaia, and son, Giovanni, the family is reaching ever further afield for new winemaking projects (including Mount Etna, where they’re partnering up with the Graci family). But this wine, the “base” Barbaresco—with source material from more than a dozen single vineyards in the zone—is the lodestar. It’s a luminous garnet-red in the glass, with perfumed aromas of red cherry, black plums, wild berries, orange peel, sandalwood, rose petals, sweet spice, cacao, tar, and underbrush. It is full-bodied but harmonious and bright, with the kind of polished, fine-grained tannins few producers of Barbaresco (or Barolo) manage to coax from Nebbiolo. When you pull the cork on this, it’s time to pull out the stops: This is “special occasion” wine of the highest order.
