wice a week, Angelo Gaja leaves his house in the … · 40 Wine Spectator • oct. 31, 2011 By...

40 Wine Spectator • oct. 31, 201140 Wine Spectator • oct. 31, 2011

By Mitch Frank // photographs By andrea Wyner

wice a week, Angelo Gaja leaves his house in the hilltop town of Barbaresco at 4:30 a.m., climbs into his black Audi A6 and heads for the highway. It’s the be-ginning of a 250-mile trek. He’ll stop once for coffee and a pastry, and then drive on until he arrives at one of his two wineries in Tuscany.

Gaja says he likes to make the trip in the early hours of morning because the road is largely empty, he can think and he can drive fast. Gaja drives very fast. For most people, it takes four to five hours to drive from Barbaresco to central Tuscany. Gaja does it in three.

At 71 years old, he shows no signs of slowing down. He walks quickly and always with purpose, leaving men half his age strug-gling to keep up. He speaks rapidly, whether in Italian, English or his native Piedmontese dialect. No matter what language he speaks, he gestures in Italian—waving his hands, gripping the table, punc-tuating statements by slicing the air with one finger. Even when

seated, he appears to be in motion. Electricity seems to crackle in his pale blue eyes.

And at 71, he still dreams big, but also manages to focus on all the minute details needed to make those dreams reality. Leading visitors around his winery in Barbaresco, he can’t help himself when he sees something amiss. “Excuse me,” he says mid-sentence, and calls a staff member to report that an electrical socket cover is miss-ing and must be fixed. While he’s on the phone, he mentions that he’s not thrilled with the glassware arrayed for a tasting flight.

You might suspect that his boundless energy would make Gaja

oct. 31, 2011 • Wine Spectator 41OCT. 31, 2011 • Wine SpeCTaTOr 41

42 Wine Spectator • oct. 31, 2011

focusing on international varieties such as Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon.

Gaja’s success has put the spotlight squarely on him, but he re-jects the superhero image. “Because I traveled so much for my wines, people began to think Gaja is Angelo Gaja,” he says. “This is not right.”

Despite its global reach, the Gaja company is a classic Italian family winery. Angelo is the fourth generation in a family of wine producers, and his ambition is a family trait. His grandmother, who managed the winery for almost 60 years, was legendary in Bar-baresco for her discipline and devotion to quality. When Angelo was a boy, she pushed him to learn the family business, telling him that a career in wine would bring him “money, hope and glory.”

Ambition, energy, devotion—these are in Gaja’s genes. And he is teaching those qualities to a fifth generation of Gajas. His two daughters, Gaia and Rossana, now work with him and his wife,

Lucia, in the family business. Gaia, the eldest, is gradually becoming the new public face of Gaja wines in overseas markets. Angelo’s son, Giovanni, just 18, may be joining the company soon.

At the end of the day, this win-ery, known for challenging the rules, is built on a foundation of family tradition. For Angelo Gaja, life has always been per la famiglia.

A womAn like thAt—A hurricAneThe town of Barbaresco is easy to spot on the drive from Alba. Perched atop a cliff that rises straight up from the Tanaro river, the village is topped by a 120-foot-high medieval tower, part of a network of sentry posts that warned of invaders. Scholars believe Barbaresco’s name comes from the word barbareschi, or barbarians, referring to the invading hordes that once occupied this high ground. Surrounded completely by a rolling landscape of vines, the town and nearby hills are home to about 600 people.

The Gaja winery, however, is largely hidden away. Halfway up the main lane, there’s a small building on the right with a green metal gate. A sign on the entrance states in English, “The winery regrets that it cannot welcome visitors without an appointment.” On a foggy morning, a small group of tourists gathers across the street in a clump, taking pictures of the gate as their guide speaks of Barbaresco’s famous resident.

On the other side of the green door lies a small courtyard, sur-rounded by buildings of various ages. Gaja walks out from offices on the left. He’s dressed in a black shirt and gray sweater, match-ing the palette of most of his labels. He’s of average height and build, except for his head, which is large, with a slightly jutting chin that seems to add to the sense of perpetual forward motion he conveys. His hair, now gray, is combed back to show off a wid-ow’s peak. Combined with his pale blue eyes, his features make his whole face radiate with focused intensity. At first glance, he can be intimidating, but as soon as he speaks, it becomes clear that this

exhausting to be around; however, his enthusiasm is infectious and his energy has a purpose. For 50 years he has used it to produce outstanding wines. In the process, he has helped change the global image of Italian wine.

In 1961, when the young Gaja took the reins at his family win-ery, Italian wine was mostly cheap, often enjoyable, but rarely se-rious. He was at the forefront of a new generation of winemakers in Italy that both improved quality by questioning the old tech-niques and improved sales by convincing the world that these new Italian wines deserved respect.

“Angelo’s wines have had a great impact on Italy,” says Lamberto Frescobaldi, whose family has made wine in Tuscany for 700 years. “Not an impact on style, but on complexity, on wines making a statement. Wine has to make an impression on people’s minds. Angelo has given many of us that vision.”

Other winemakers shared that vision, in places like Barolo, Mon-talcino, Bolgheri and more, but Gaja made the biggest splash. For decades, he did the grunt work, visiting restaurants and retailers in new markets, first in Europe, then in America and Asia. He was always eager to meet people face to face—sommeliers, import-ers, consumers—and he almost always made an impression.

But Gaja’s success isn’t just in salesmanship. He is constantly thinking about new ideas to try in the vineyard and in the cellar, challenging tradition to improve quality, from cutting yields to exercising stricter temperature con-trol of fermentations to handling Nebbiolo’s legendary tannins more gently to aging his wines in French oak barriques. He also planted international varietals in Barbaresco. Not every idea proved a home run, but he was always willing to try.

“Why is he who he is? Because he is a gifted, talented winemaker, he is a smart businessman and also a very gracious host,” says Aldo Vacca, director of the Produttori del Barbaresco, who worked for Gaja for five years. “Very few winemakers excel in all three fields of the industry.”

For half a century, Gaja has maintained an admirable level of quality. (For more on this, see “The Gaja Wines: Balancing Tradi-tion and Innovation,” page 61.) The Gaja Barbaresco 2007, the most recent release, earned 93 points in a Wine Spectator blind tast-ing this spring. His three single-vineyard bottlings from Barbaresco all earned classic scores: Sorì Tildìn 2007 achieved 95 points, each of Costa Russi 2007 and Sorì San Lorenzo 2007, 97 points. Their prices also show how Gaja has changed the image of Italian wine—each sells for more than $400 a bottle.

Unwilling to increase volume at his Barbaresco winery, yet unable to stand pat, Gaja has expanded outside Piedmont in the past 17 years. In 1994, he bought a historic estate in Montalcino, Pieve Santa Restituta. There he takes a more traditional approach, making a small amount of wine only from Sangiovese. In 1996, he bought a property in Bolgheri, on the Tuscan coast, renaming it Ca’ Marcanda. There he started with a blank slate and without the constraints of tradition, building a cutting-edge winery and

gaja’s enthusiasm is infec-tious and his energy has a purpose. for 50 years he has used it to produce out-standing wine. in the pro-cess, he has helped change the image of italian wine.

oct. 31, 2011 • Wine Spectator 43

intensity is nothing but boyish enthusiasm. He refers to guests, male or female, as “my dearrrr.”

“Angelo Gaja is the type of person that when you talk to him, you understand you have his full attention and at the same time you know he has no time to waste on you,” says Vacca. “The man is care-fully listening, but at the same time you feel you need to be quick because he is a busy man. It can be intimidating, of course.”

Beginning a rapid tour of his winery, Gaja explains that his great-grandfather Giovanni lived in one of the houses in the court-yard, which was shared by several families. Although his family has lived in the region for two centuries, the Gajas are not origi-nally Italian. They emigrated from Catalonia, not far from Barce-lona. In 1859, Giovanni established a winery in Barbaresco. He already had a successful carting business, transporting casks of wine, and the family also owned an osteria, a small restaurant, down by the ferry landing on the Tanaro.

They owned some vineyards and made wine to sell to diners. Eventually, regulars began asking if they could buy wine to take home. Wine increasingly became an important source of income, and Giovanni tunneled under his courtyard neighbors to make space for cellars.

Giovanni had several sons, and enough success to leave each a

small farm. According to family legend, some of the sons were drunks and some were gamblers, and all but one promptly lost their land. Giovanni’s fourth son, named Angelo, kept his, possibly be-cause he was shrewd and possibly because he was terrified of his wife, Clotilde Rey Gaja.

Clotilde Rey Gaja was a force of nature. Originally from a small town 3 miles from the French border, she had studied to be a school-teacher. When she joined the Gaja family, she quickly took charge of the osteria, and soon she was also managing the winery, handling accounting and sales. Many of the villagers called her madama. “My grandfather had a saying,” notes the modern-day Angelo. “ ‘With a woman like that, a hurricane, you can either move with her or you can get flattened.’ ” Her husband used her dowry to buy an-other vineyard. Eventually the family decided to quit the restau-rant business and focus on wine.

You can see the current Angelo’s face in pictures of his grandpar-ents. His intensity comes from Clotilde. His sense of humor may come from the older Angelo, who has a wry smile under his mustache.

Their eldest son, Giovanni, was born in 1908 and attended school in Alba. At 25, he began working at the winery, but his primary profession was as a surveyor. In those days it was an influential po-sition—he also acted as a broker for land deals and was involved

Gaja at the family home in Barberesco with, from left, daughter Rossana, wife Lucia and daughter Gaia. Both of his daughters have chosen to follow in their father’s big footsteps.


cour

tesy

of

gaja

in Piedmont, the ’50s brought il miracolo economico, the economic miracle, which transformed Italy from a developing nation into one of the world’s largest econo-mies. The U.S. Marshall Plan, land reforms and economic re-forms all played a role.

Alba had been a parochial town. Thanks to an expanding textile industry and to Ferrero, the

local sweets company that invented Nutella in 1946, the area boomed. The construction industry prospered, and Giovanni used much of his money to buy vineyards. And there was plenty of land on the mar-ket. The noble families and the church were selling because the mez-zadri were abandoning farming to work in Alba and Turin.

In these heady times, sleepy Barbaresco didn’t captivate a young boy. “I had no idea I wanted to follow in Giovanni’s footsteps at the winery. He chose for me,” says Gaja. He went to school in Alba, but starting at age 11, spent his weekends in Barbaresco, helping out under the focused eye of his grandmother, or tildìn, as the fam-ily called Clotilde. “I didn’t want to be there,” he freely admits. “I wanted to be with my friends.”

But Clotilde’s lessons stuck. At 14, Gaja entered Alba’s wine-making school, the Istituto Tecnico Agrario e Enologico, begin-ning a six-year program that combined high school with university studies. When he graduated, he enrolled to get his master’s degree in economics from the university in Turin. He took classes part-time while working, graduating in 1970.

Gaja also did something no one else in his family really had—he traveled. He served apprenticeships in Burgundy and at the Languedoc’s Montpelier research center. He came to appreciate that there was more to winemaking than the traditions of the Langhe. He even spent three months in London, hoping to learn some English, working at a fish-and-chips shop to pay his way. When he went to restaurants to eat, he got a rude awakening about

with various construction projects. Giovanni had a natural business sense and was someone people trusted. In 1958, the citizens of Barbaresco elected him mayor, even though he lived in Alba un-til 1963. He served for 25 years.

Giovanni’s job brought him fa-miliarity with every piece of land in the region. Because of the mez-zadria, or sharecropping system, common throughout Italy, most of the land in the Langhe, the re-gion that includes Barolo and Barbaresco, was owned by noble fami-lies. Sharecroppers worked the land, selling the grapes and other crops and keeping half the proceeds for themselves. Winemakers like the Gajas bought the grapes, made wine and sold it to private customers, often the same noble families who owned the land.

The Gajas were unusual in that they also owned some land. Gio-vanni wanted more, but the years between the World Wars were hard times in the Langhe. “Before World War II, he had no money, but he was already noting the land that made the best wines,” says Gaja. “He already had a map in his head.”

Despite the difficult times, the family continued to build a name for their wine. Giovanni sold off lower-quality wines in bulk. “It was a sacrifice, but construction gave him the money to do it,” says Gaja. Giovanni was also the first to put the name Gaja at the top of the label, beginning in 1937. “He was not shy,” laughs Giovan-ni’s son, calling the kettle black.

Your son will bAnkrupt YouIn many ways, Angelo Gaja was no different from the three genera-tions before him. What was different was the world that shaped him. Angelo was born in 1940, and grew up not in Barbaresco, but in Alba, and during dramatic times. After the devastation of World War II and guerilla warfare between Fascists and their opponents

“my grandfather had a saying, ‘with a woman like that, a hurricane, you can either move with her oryou can get flattened.’ ” —angelo gaja

Angelo’s father, Giovanni (left), was a shrewd businessman who gave his son the freedom to innovate and to make mistakes. Angelo began helping in the winery at age 11 under the tutelage of his headstrong grandmother Clotilde (below), who managed the winery for decades.


win

e sp

ecta

tor

arch

ive

a thermometer into the must to monitor the temperature—not control it, just monitor it. Rama told him to go insert a thermometer somewhere else.

Giovanni was willing to let his son try out new ideas and make his own mistakes, but he wasn’t going to fire a veteran like Rama. Gaja still bristles at the memory. “At that time, producers here were very proud to say, ‘I am making the wine exactly as my grand-father did.’ But their grandfathers didn’t have running water,” he says. “You can’t throw tradition out the window, but you need in-novation.” To Gaja, the idea of simply retreading the path his fa-ther had carved was intolerable. But for the time being he stayed away from Rama, focusing instead on the vineyards.

Locals remember the young Gaja driving his tractor far too fast down vineyard lanes, always in a hurry. Vineyard manager Luigi Cavallo wasn’t thrilled by some of Angelo’s ideas but was willing to try them. The first move was to cut yields by 50 percent. In postwar Italy, farmers were happy to have Nebbiolo vines weighed down by grapes—underripe grapes. Nebbiolo is always the first variety in the Langhe to bud but the last to ripen, increasing the threat of frost, mildew and other problems. It often didn’t ripen completely before falling temperatures triggered harvest. Gaja

wanted his fruit ripe. Many growers saw the severe pruning go-

ing on in the Gaja vineyards and laughed to the mayor down at the café that his son was going to bankrupt him. Giovanni vented to Angelo, but allowed him to keep prun-ing. What’s more, he agreed when Angelo told him they should stop buying grapes; the Gajas obtained half of their fruit from other growers. Gaja couldn’t control how those growers were working, so he wanted only estate grapes. With these two decisions, he effectively cut production by 75 percent. When 1961 turned out to be a small harvest in the Langhe, Giovanni was unhappy.

But 1962 produced a bumper crop, and while many wineries made lean, light wines, the Gajas made ripe ones. Angelo’s ideas were validated, and Giovanni bought more land. In 1964, they purchased a farm owned by the archdiocese of Alba, which included the vineyard Sorì San Lorenzo. (Sorì is Piedmontese for a south-facing slope, which is ideal for ripening Nebbi-olo.) The sharecropper on the property had vines in only one portion, mixed among various other crops and space for livestock. Gaja harvested and sold 10 tons of wheat that year before he could plant vines up and down the entire length of the slope. He planted those vines ritocchino, in vertical rows down the slope, as opposed to the traditional girapoggio, horizontal rows running across the slope. Vertical rows allowed for closer planting, increas-ing the vineyard’s density.

the image of Italian wines abroad. First of all, they weren’t avail-able, except in Italian restaurants, and even there the wine lists were small and unimpressive. Locals in the Langhe considered Barolo the king of Italian wines, with Barbaresco close behind. But both were practically unknown outside northern Italy.

In 1961, the same year his grandmother died, Angelo went to work at the family winery. He was 21 years old, full of big ideas and 20th-century dreams. He ran smack into 19th-century tradi-tion. He had an enology degree, but the winery already had a winemaker, a veteran named Luigi Rama who was making the wines in a traditional manner and receiving accolades for them. Why should he listen to the owner’s egghead son? At one point during fermentation that fall, Angelo suggested that Rama insert

“you can’t throw tradition out the window, but you need innovation.” —angelo gaja

Gaja in 1976. He innovated from the start, first halving his vineyard yields and then using only estate grapes for the wines.


But each day as Giovanni left his house and walked by the vines, he shook his head, saying “darmagi,” Piedmontese for “what a pity.” An-gelo responded by naming the resulting wine Darmagi.

Guido wAs pAtientBack in the winery courtyard, Gaja heads for a door on the right and descends into the cellars. Invisible to most eyes, the winery goes down five stories into Barbaresco’s hillside. Each floor is a tangle of rooms, some connected by small tunnels and many dug in the 19th century, filled with stainless steel tanks, large oak vats and small oak barrels. It’s 150 years of winemaking, but most of the equipment is from the past 40 years, since Gaja got his hands on the cellar.

In 1970 Rama retired, and Gaja recruited a 23-year-old enologist and fellow graduate of Alba’s winemaking school to replace him. Guido Rivella quickly proved the perfect partner for Gaja and is still winemaker today. Like Gaja, Rivella was educated and wanted to try new methods in the winery. But his personality was completely

different—cautious and methodical. “I was always in a hurry,” Gaja says. “Guido was patient.”

Rivella puts it this way: “He was in charge of the accelerator, I of the brake.”

Nebbiolo requires patience. This noble variety, linked to the Langhe for at least 700 years, challenges ev-ery winemaker who dares to work with it. When fully ripe—a big if—it has high acidity and tannins and low anthocyanins, the compounds that produce red wine’s color. “In-telligent people are not easy, but you manage at the end to build a constructive, positive and satisfac-tory relationship,” says Rivella. “It is the same with Nebbiolo. It is hard to domesticate it. Tannins are its power, but they can also represent a limit if they are not interpreted in the right way.”

For well over 100 years, Langhe winemakers had tackled this chal-lenging grape by leaving their fer-menting wine on the must in large oak vats for a month or longer, ex-tracting all the tannin and color they could. They then placed the wine in large Slavonian oak vats called botti, where it would sit and age for years, after which it was transferred to glass demijohns to age still longer. The hope was that time would eventually soften the acidity and tannins. In the process, much of the wine grew oxidized. Because fermentations were long,

In 1967, Giovanni bought the farm of Roncagliette from a Fiat engineer in Turin. It included two plots of land that would come to be known as Sorì Tildìn—named for Clotilde—and Costa Russi. The winery released the 1967 vintage from Sorì San Lorenzo as a single-vineyard wine, a first for Barbaresco.

Giovanni continued to mutter about his son’s methods, but he never stopped him. Even when Angelo committed what may have been the biggest sin of all, ripping out the Nebbiolo in the prized Bricco vineyard just below the Gajas’ house and replanting with Cabernet Sauvignon, Giovanni didn’t put his foot down. “He didn’t like Cabernet Sauvignon in our soil, but he didn’t stop it,” says Gaja.

“he was in charge of the accelerator, i of the brake.” —guido rivella, Winemaker

Winemaker Guido Rivella (left) and assistant cellar master Alessandro Albarello in Barbaresco. They control the fierce tannic power of the native Nebbiolo with modern winemaking techniques largely unknown in Piedmont before Gaja’s introduction of them.


connect its cellars to his own. The light from the courtyard above the room illuminates one of Gaja’s more radical—critics would say heretical—innovations in Langhe winemaking: multiple rows of small, French oak barrels.

Barriques—Gaja had seen the 225-liter casks on his trips to France and thought nothing of them. It was unsurprising that the French would be using their own oak and traditional containers to mature their wines, just as Italians were using the larger Slavonian oak casks called botti. But on a trip to Napa Valley in 1967, Gaja noticed that the Californians were switching to French barriques, and he started researching their effects. The smaller casks would provide more oxygen exposure to his maturing Nebbiolo, stabilizing color and structure. The barriques, unlike botti, would only be used for two to three years, adding flavor and structure to the wines.

In 1968, Gaja bought 36 used barriques from a Bordeaux château.

temperatures were uncontrolled and the oak vats were hard to keep clean, the final wines were often flawed, with volatile acid-ity, brettanomyces or residual sugar.

The changes that Gaja and Rivella began to make were similar to those being espoused in Bordeaux by Émile Peynaud and by the University of California, Davis, to Napa Valley winemakers. But in the Langhe, they might as well have been from Mars. In 1974, Gaja installed the first stainless steel fermentation tanks, allowing Rivella to closely control temperature and oxygen exposure during fermentation. This helped preserve the wine’s fruit. Rivella prefers to let the wild yeasts on the grapes conduct fermentation, but he keeps cultured yeasts on hand just in case. Rivella also began to draw the wine off the must sooner, usually after three weeks, short-ening the extraction of tannin.

Next on the agenda was malolactic fermentation, the process in which bacteria convert the hard, malic acid into softer, lactic acid, crucial in a high-acidity red like Nebbiolo. In the past, it had been a mystery to most winemakers, and sometimes it didn’t finish, leav-ing a sour taste in the wine. Rivella began controlling malolactic by warming up the cellar until it was completed, and monitoring it by measuring the levels of the two acids from samples.

leading his guests through the labyrinth of his winery, Gaja stops in a room lit by a small hole in the center of the ceil-ing, part of an old well that dates to the 13th century. An old palazzo stands across the street from Gaja’s winery. He bought it several years ago, tunneling under the street to

“he is a gifted, talented winemaker, he is a smart businessman and also a very gracious host. very few winemakers excel in all three fields.” —aldo vacca, produttori del barbaresco

Gaja still calls the village of Barbaresco, where the family winery is located, home. The vintner prefers to keep a low profile in the village, in contrast to his energetic demeanor.


Gaja prevented his wines from being sold in most Italian restau-rants in other countries. He didn’t want his wines relegated to an ethnic pigeonhole. He wanted them next to the Bordeaux and the Burgundies.

Darmagi, the Cabernet Sauvignon that shamed his father, was another attempt by Gaja to gain respect. He wanted to prove that Barbaresco could produce great wine from one of the great grapes of the world. It was a way of grabbing the attention of people who ignored indigenous Italian varietals. Darmagi and Gaja’s Chardon-nay have consistently received outstanding scores.

Another part of gaining respect was charging Bordeaux/Burgundy prices for Nebbiolo. When Gaja released his 1971 Barbaresco, he more than doubled the price of his 1970 vintage. The price has only gone up since, and the 2007 Barbaresco sells for more than $200 at retail. Partially, Gaja says, this is because quality costs money—whether it’s expensive tanks and barriques or the cost of low yields. He is making an artisanal product. He produces only 1,000 cases of each of his single-vineyard wines.

But he acknowledges that pricing will always be a sore spot for some consumers. “Several years ago, I started getting regular phone calls complaining about the prices,” he says. “A retailer in Miami, whenever one of his customers complained about the high price of Italian wines, he would hand them one of my business cards and say, ‘Complain to this guy.’ ” Gaja laughs at the story, but the truth is that his prices will keep many wine lovers from ever tasting a Gaja wine. They have become luxury goods.

There was another move that gave Gaja access to more markets. In the late 1970s, a friend, an Italian who imported Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, told Gaja he was dropping the brand and asked if Gaja knew of an importer who could pick it up. Gaja thought about it and said, “Why not me?”

So Gaja founded Gaja Distribuzione to import wines to Italy. By 1990, it was making as much money as the winery. Today it imports almost 42,000 cases annually from 60 wineries in 15 coun-tries, including Louis Jadot from Burgundy; Haut-Brion, Yquem, Cos-d’Estournel and Lynch-Bages from Bordeaux; Vega Sicilia from Spain; and Joseph Phelps and Kistler from the United States. It also imports Riedel glasses. Beginning in 1979, Gaja began ordering extra-long corks for his wines from his Sardinian sup-pliers. He believed a custom order would force them to more care-fully select TCA-free bark for him. But traditional corkscrews couldn’t extract the long corks easily. The recently developed Screwpull corkscrew, made in Texas, could. So Gaja Distribuzi-one began importing them.

He got ripped off. They were very old and had been used for sev-eral vintages. But he went back to the drawing board and experi-mented for eight years with different suppliers, woods, cuts and toasting, trying to find the right formula. First he aged Barbera in the wood, then Nebbiolo. Gaja says he believes his 1978 vin-tage was the first that truly expressed his vision for Gaja wines. Today, he buys his own wood from French suppliers, leaving the pieces stacked in his courtyard for several years to season before they are coopered.

To Langhe traditionalists, the barrique is Gaja’s ultimate sin, even more so because it was quickly adopted by many of his neighbors. The traditionalists complain that barriques mask Nebbiolo’s own tannins and flavors, transforming Barolo and Barbaresco into just another big red wine, indistinguishable from Bordeaux or Napa Cabernet. The late Barolo winemaker Bartolo Mascarello once put the mantra “No barrique, no Berlusconi” on his labels, effectively declaring them as big an issue as Italy’s divisive prime minister.

Gaja believes most of his critics are simply too insular in their vision. In the 1960s, when Gaja first tried to export his wines, res-taurateurs from Switzerland and Germany told him his wines were good, but too rustic compared to Bordeaux. His goal was to create a wine that tasted complex and balanced, yet still conveyed the uniqueness of Nebbiolo. Gaja doesn’t think the oak masks any-thing, just elevates the wine.

That said, he does believe you can go too far with oak, one of the reasons he experimented for so long to obtain the right formula for aging his Nebbiolos. Today, Rivella leaves the wines for a year in barriques, about a third of them new, then transfers them to used botti for the second year.

complAin to this GuYThe third prong of Gaja’s changes involved marketing. When Gaja took over, the family’s wines were sold directly to private custom-ers in Piedmont and the neighboring provinces of Lombardy and Liguria. Giovanni urged his son to travel and find new customers. In 1965, Angelo walked into the best restaurant in Milan and con-vinced the owner to put Gaja Barbaresco 1961 on the wine list. While Giovanni appreciated the loyalty of private customers, he realized that the best way to get more attention and eventually ex-pand to new markets was to focus on fine dining restaurants. An-gelo agreed. Gaja didn’t have money for advertising and had few sales agents at the time; why not let influential sommeliers and restaurant owners sell the wines for them by word of mouth?

This began decades of Angelo traveling through Europe, person-ally pitching the wines to the best restaurants. In 1973, he began exporting to the United States and became a regular visitor. Today, China and Japan are regular stops. Importers and restaurateurs ap-preciate that he comes to promote the wines. He has built personal relationships across the globe.

In the process, he sold not only Gaja, but Italy, arguing that its wines deserved to be as respected as French wines. For many years,

to traditionalists, using barriques is gaja’s ultimate sin. they complain that the smaller casks mask nebbio-lo’s tannins and flavors, making the wines too big and international in style.

BOnuS VideO: Following Family tradition— Joined by his daughter Gaia, leading piedmont vintner angelo gaja reminisces about his grandparents who founded the winery, their influence on him, his wines and his never-ending quest for quality. Watch it at www.winespectator.com/103111.

winespectator.com

Clockwise from left: Lucia, Angelo, Gaia and Rossana:

Gaia says Angelo listens when his children have suggestions,

explains why he disagrees, and then tells them to go try it.

“You have to be respectful of their ideas,” Angelo says.


Lucia were working long days at the winery, his preteen daughters were watching hours of television. He cut the power cord.

Aside from TV, Gaja has given his daughters the same freedom he had—the freedom to make their own choices. Neither was forced to work in the winery, but both have chosen to. “I think it will be tough for Giovanni if he chooses to join the business, with two strong women ahead of him,” Gaja jokes. “Parents have to under-stand their children. You have to be respectful of their ideas.”

Gaia says that when she presents ideas, her father listens, ex-plains why he disagrees, and then tells her to go try them. Before she began at the winery, she spent almost two years in San Fran-cisco working for Southern Wine & Spirits, gaining perspective on how business is done in another market. “San Francisco offered uncountable opportunities of social, business, personal, cultural life, and I couldn’t wait to experience them all,” she says. “But Bar-baresco is unique and where I was born.”

Today she works with her father to oversee foreign markets, do-ing much of the traveling that he used to do. She’s also interested in viticulture, working with vineyard manager Giorgio Culasso. Rossana works with her mother on domestic accounts and admin-istration, and aids Rivella in the cellars.

hope, moneY, GlorYIn Piedmont, it was cool and cloudy, the vineyards covered by waves of fog. In Tuscany, where Gaja is beginning another day af-ter his three-hour commute, the sun is out and the greens of tall cypresses and gnarled olive trees color the landscape. “My grand-mother told me that if I chose the life of a winemaker, I would have hope, money and glory,” he says. “Pieve Santa Restituta and Ca’ Marcanda are my hope.”

Gaja wines produces 30,000 cases a year, a number that has not changed since 1989. Gaja firmly believes he can remain an artisan only if he stays at what he considers artisanal volumes. But in 1989, Robert Mondavi, one of Gaja’s idols, proposed that they partner on a joint venture in Tuscany, or possibly in the New World. Gaja passed; he was from Piedmont, what did he know of Tuscany or countries outside Italy? He told reporters later that the joint ven-ture would be like “a mosquito having sex with an elephant—very dangerous and not much pleasure.” Mondavi eventually invested in Tenuta dell’Ornellaia in Tuscany’s Bolgheri region.

However, Gaja continued to ponder the idea. His father had believed in wines of the soil, wines from the land you knew. But Mondavi had proven that that you could take your ideas to an-other region.

In 1994, Gaja bought Pieve Santa Restituta, in Montalcino. One of the oldest, most respected properties in the area, it is located on the southwest slope of the appellation. The seventh-century church of Santa Restituta stands there, and Gaja is funding a restoration project of the historic chapel. On this sunny morning, a construc-tion crew is working on concealing the winery; completed in 2005, it was carved into the hillside and will now be covered over, tucked underground, leaving just the church in view.

Walking around the property, Gaia smiles from ear to ear. She loves how wild this place is compared to Piedmont. Her father agrees. He’s actually starting a program to plant cypresses in the Langhe, hoping to counter the monoculture of vines his area has become in

Gaja says the import business gave him greater access to the win-eries he represented, allowing him to learn more about their cellar methods and marketing techniques. The business provides added value in synergy—it is more cost effective for Gaja to build a sales network across Italy that handles his wines and his imported wines simultaneously. There are currently 100 sales reps in Italy market-ing the wines to high-end restaurants and boutique wineshops.

mY fAther opened his eYesAnd sAw mY motherIn 1971, a Barbaresco priest learned there was a job opening for a secretary at the Gaja winery and recommended a young mem-ber of his parish, 18-year-old Lucia Giordano. She quickly became an able employee and developed a good relationship with Gio-vanni, who worked in the office overseeing things. (Giovanni came to the office almost every day until 1997, when he was 89. He died in 2002.)

Giovanni gave Lucia fatherly advice and books to read. “Angelo took care of the vineyards as well as the cellar, and he was often

on business trips, hardly ever at the office,” says Lucia. “And at the office, he was always in a hurry and of few words.”

That changed in 1976, when Lucia took a cooking class at a nearby restaurant and Angelo walked in. “Finally, after five years, my father opened his eyes and saw my mother,” says Gaia Gaja, Angelo and Lucia’s oldest child. After three months of dating, they were engaged—but they kept it secret at first. “My mother arrived at the office with an engagement ring, and my grandfather said, ‘Lucia, you are young. Think carefully before getting married. Don’t get off at the first stop on the train.’ She said, ‘But the ring is from Angelo.’ ” Angelo’s parents, who had been worried about their 36-year-old son’s bachelor status for some time, were thrilled.

Lucia has been crucial to Gaja’s success. She is her husband’s partner at the winery, keeping the office running smoothly while he travels the world. She manages the front office and heads the sales network for Gaja Distribuzione and the Gaja wines in Italy.

Gaia was born in 1979, younger sister Rossana in 1981. Son Gio-vanni was born in 1993. Gaia has her father’s eyes and expression, while Rossana looks more like Lucia. Asked how Angelo chose her echoing name (Gaia is the Italian spelling of the Catalan Gaja), Gaia laughs and says that she believes it’s so she’ll always be a Gaja no matter who she marries. Both daughters describe a father who traveled a great deal but was actively involved. Even as a dad, Gaja prefers bold moves. At one point he discovered that while he and

“my grandmother told me that if i chose the life of a winemaker, i would have hope, money and glory. pieve santa restituta and ca’ marcanda are my hope.” —angelo gaja


Mic

k ro

ck/c

epha

s

Pieve Santa Restituta is about tradition. At Ca’ Marcanda, Gaja has started from scratch with no history or family legacy. The prop-erty had been used for various crops, so Gaja planted extensively. There now is a total of 150 acres, with very little Sangiovese. Origi-nally Gaja used more of the Italian grape, but he was not impressed. “The soil here is wrong for Sangiovese, and the land is too flat,” he says. Like many of his neighbors, he focuses on international varieties—Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and a little Syrah, planted in three vineyards.

There are three wines, each meant to express a different type of soil; Gaja’s team has identified 11 distinct soil types in the vine-yards. Ca’ Marcanda, the flagship, is a blend of 50 percent Merlot, 40 percent Cabernet Sauvignon and 10 percent Cabernet Franc. The soils they grow in are mostly rocky, with a good deal of lime-stone. Magari is also 50 percent Merlot, with equal amounts of the two Cabernets; its grapes come from both limestone soil and darker clay soils. Promis is 55 percent Merlot, 35 percent Syrah and 10 percent Sangiovese, all planted in the darker clay soils.

Gaja admits he is still learning the terroir here, and the wines reflect that learning curve. While the past three vintages in release have been mostly outstanding, there were some years that were merely good. All of the wines show richness, but not yet the com-plexity of the wines from Gaja’s other two properties.

But Gaja says he will be patient, even if it means that his chil-dren will end up being the ones to make Ca’ Marcanda a true suc-cess. Unlike in Barbaresco, where he is the fourth generation, here he is the first. While his staff is largely local, it is still overseen by Culasso and Rivella. In Tuscany, where so many of the success-ful wineries are owned by newcomers, winemaking consultants are very popular. In Piedmont, where the wineries are owned by

the past century. The trees would provide homes for birds, small mammals and insects, bringing more life to the vineyards.

There are 40 acres of vines in four vineyards at Pieve Santa Res-tituta, planted on a mix of limestone and clay soils. There are three wines: a Brunello di Montalcino, made from grapes sourced from all four vineyards; Renina, a Brunello made from the best grapes of three of the vineyards; and Sugarille, sourced from the vineyard of the same name, which has a greater percentage of limestone.

Montalcino has been a boomtown in the past 20 years, but Gaja has the luxury of focusing on quality over quantity. He produces fewer than 6,000 cases a year. He doesn’t make Rosso di Montal-cino, because he believes the so-called “baby Brunellos” are infe-rior and hurt the image of Brunello. When excessive rain ruined the 2002 vintage and sweltering heat hurt the 2003 vintage, Gaja sold off his entire production in bulk.

When he bought the property, Gaja ripped out several acres of Cabernet Sauvignon. Unlike at his other estates, he has chosen to focus on one grape here, Sangiovese. Asked about the recent Montalcino scandal, wherein some producers were accused of blending other grapes into their Brunellos and were sanctioned, Gaja prefers to be politic and say nothing. Gaia says her father is a pragmatist and understands the temptation, but he also believes that everyone should follow the rules. While he’s hardly a slave to tradition, he’s not a fan of recent proposals to change Brunello regulations.

An hour downhill—at least at Gaja-speed—lies Bolgheri, the wild region on the Tuscan coast. In 1996, after two years of pro-tracted talks with a family of merchants, Gaja bought a property here, down the road from Ornellaia. He named it Ca’ Marcanda, the house of endless negotiations.

Gaja purchased Pieve Santa Restituta, in Montalcino, in 1994. He grows only Sangiovese on this estate and is funding the restoration of a centuries-old chapel amid the vines.


cour

tesy

of

gaja

that his single-vineyard Nebbiolos would no longer be classified in the Barbaresco DOCG, but the lesser Langhe Nebbiolo DOC cat-egory. Conspiracy theorists whispered that he would start adding Cabernet to Sorí San Lorenzo, which the law would allow. Gaja denies he ever considered that, but he did begin blending 5 per-cent Barbera into the wines. With better vineyard techniques, his single-vineyard wines were always ripe. A little Barbera, a grape with high acidity, would add freshness.

Taking his three great wines out of the Barbaresco category was another sign that Gaja had surpassed his region in some ways. Sales did not suffer because “Barbaresco” did not appear on the label; the word “Gaja” was enough. That wasn’t necessarily good for the appellation, however.

But Gaja insists that he has not turned his back on Barbaresco. He argues that as his single-vineyard wines gained in reputation, the Gaja Barbaresco, made from multiple vineyards, was treated as an ordinary wine, Gaja’s Barbaresco normale. He wants it to be the top Barbaresco they produce, leaving the single-vineyard wines in another category.

Gaja stops on the street, just outside the winery, and points to a little house just down the hill. It’s Gaia’s. When she started work-ing at the winery full-time, after years abroad in San Francisco and Barcelona, she insisted that she would only do it if she could live in Milan. Barbaresco was too sleepy. “Now she lives closer to the winery than I do,” he laughs.

Just as he did, Gaja’s children will have to learn how to balance their desire to innovate with their respect for family history. They also face the challenge of matching his accomplishments, but they have been taught to try. After all, hope, money and glory are in their genes.

families stretching back centuries, they are not. Asked if he would hire a consultant for either Tuscan property, Gaja recoils. “My god! No, no, no.” He knows his winemaker of 40 years is no hired gun. At the same time, that might make his learning curve steeper.

After greeting the staff in the small stone office up front, Gaja walks around back through an olive grove and quickly up a hill. He loves how different this land is from that of his other two wineries. There are mountains on one side and the Mediterranean on the other. “The light is different here,” he says. “So are the smells and the soil.” On the far side of the hill, a strikingly modern winery rises from the landscape. Designed by architect Giovanni Bo, the Ca’ Marcanda winery at first seems completely alien, built into the hill-side but with an angular green copper roof jutting out. At second glance it becomes apparent that it’s an extension of the landscape—the roof melds with the mountains behind it, and with the forest.

All of Gaja’s wineries are hidden from sight. Back in Piedmont the next day, walking the sleepy streets of Barbaresco, he tries to explain why. In Italy, he says, you can’t show off. “You have to make people forgive you for your success. Farsi perdonare il successo.” This

man, who built his wines’ reputation and lifted the reputation of Italian wine in the process, feels he has to be humble at home.

This complexity is part of Gaja’s character. Outside the Langhe, he boasts of his wines. At home, he hides his success. In Montal-cino, he respects tradition, history and even the church. In Bol-gheri, he pushes the boundaries of what Italian wine is.

With his family’s long history in winemaking, Gaja will always walk a fine line between respect for tradition and his desire to in-novate. A most fitting example came in 1999, when he announced

The Ca’Marcanda winery in Tuscany’s Bolgheri region, where Gaja started from scratch. He has yet to realize the best from its terroirs—a goal he admits his children may inherit.


Angelo Gaja is a tireless innovator. When he joined his father in the family winery in 1961, they had 52 acres of vines, all in Barbaresco. Today, the family firm controls 567 acres in Barbaresco and Barolo in Piedmont and the Brunello di Montalcino and Bol-gheri regions of Tuscany.

Quality is a keynote. The Gaja wines consistently score outstand-ing (90 to 94 points on Wine Spectator’s 100-point scale), and often classic (95 to 100). (For reviews of current releases, see the accom-panying chart.)

In Barbaresco and Barolo, Gaja works principally with Nebbiolo, the region’s renowned indigneous grape variety. Though he respects tradition there, he has never been afraid of change. In 1967, Gaja and his father began making vineyard-designated Barbarescos. In 1996, Gaja began blending a small amount of Barbera with the Nebbiolo in these wines. In 1971, he and winemaker Guido Riv-ella incorporated the use of French barriques into the aging regime of the Nebbiolo.

Keeping yields low to achieve optimum ripeness in the formi-dable Nebbiolo tannins and macerating gently, Gaja and Rivella gain power and a velvety lushness to their wines’ texture, balanced by freshness and finesse. Above all, there is purity to the wines. The wines are more modern than those of staunch traditionalists, yet more traditional than reds from some new-wave producers.

Of the single-vineyard bottlings, Gaja’s Costa Russi is the laci-est in texture, the Sorì Tildìn shows density and breadth, and the Sorì San Lorenzo combines power and elegance. The Barolos are muscular, with more bass notes. Conteisa, from the cru Cerequio

in La Morra, shows the more perfume and finesse of the two, while the Serralunga d’Alba origins of Sperss give that wine greater den-sity and structure.

When the wines are young, the new oak lends some spice ele-ments, yet it’s well-integrated and in time is absorbed into the wine. A Conteisa 1996 and Sperss 1989, tasted at the winery in Bar-baresco last November, revealed all the classic elements of Barolo: aromas of flowers and truffle, licorice and tar flavors and, above all, savory, mineral notes.

With Brunello di Montalcino, Gaja makes three wines from the Pieve Santa Restituta estate. Made of 100 percent Sangiovese, these are fleshier wines than Gaja’s Nebbiolo-based reds, but none-theless show the trademark Gaja polish. Barrel aging gives them roundness and sweet spice notes, placing them firmly in the mod-ern camp, yet without flamboyance or exaggeration.

Gaja’s Brunellos also age well. Tasted in the region this past April, the Sugarille 1999 was powerful and long, while the Ren-inna 1996 was elegant, fresh and spicy. Both matched well with a dish of beef cheeks braised in Brunello.

Gaja’s latest project, Ca’ Marcanda, in Bolgheri, allows him greater freedom to experiment. There, he planted Merlot, Caber-net Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Syrah (in addition to some Sangiovese with which he was underwhelmed, the region being too warm for the variety, he says). There are three red blends, each based on a different profile of soil types. Though distinctly differ-ent from wines of Gaja’s other estates, the wines of Ca’ Marcanda also bear the richness and class Gaja wines are known for.

There are textural and structural differences in the wines, yet at

Balancing tradition and innovation // By Bruce sanderson


Top RecenT Releases FRom Gaja WineRiesThese wines were tasted blind by Bruce Sanderson. WineSpectator.com members can access complete reviews using our online Wine Ratings search.

Gajawine Score Price

Langhe costa russi 2007 97 $440Very supple, oozing seduction and class. Cherry, raspberry, violet and spice flavors are accented by licorice and mineral notes. Intense, with tension and focus. There’s a firm structure, and it’s almost racy on the long mineral aftertaste.

Langhe Sorì San Lorenzo 2007 97 $440Rich and sumptuous, with sweet spices, smoke, toast, blackberry, plum and licorice that unfold in layers, matched to a dense texture and finely meshed tannins. Combining grace and power, it resonates on the finish with cherry, spice and mineral notes.

Langhe Sorì Tildìn 2007 95 $440Toast and spice aromas lead off in this warm, expansive red, evoking black cherry, plum, floral and spice flavors all allied to a silky texture and precision structure. Rich fruit and spice flavors echo on the finish.

Langhe Sperss 2006 94 $255A rich, chewy red, with complex flavors of sandalwood, plum, bitter chocolate and roasted vanilla, all backed by a firm structure. There’s terrific balance, and this just needs time to integrate.

Barbaresco 2007 93 $210Bright, rich and powerful, boasting oak spice that adds interest to its cherry, licorice and tobacco flavors. Shows fine intensity and a chewy texture. Initially a little dry on the finish, but with extended aeration, this gets better and better, with a long aftertaste of sweet spice.

Langhe conteisa 2006 93 $215Rich and supple, with a dusting of refined tannins providing a frame-for plum, black cherry, chocolate and sweet spice aromas and flavors.

Langhe Darmagi 2006 91 $225Distinctly varietal and aromatic, offering black currant and violet fla-vors, with hints of sage and sweet spice, all melding with the rich tex-ture and integrated structure. Lingers with black currant and spice on the aftertaste. Cabernet Sauvignon, with Merlot and Cabernet Franc.

Pieve Santa ReStitutawine Score Price

Brunello di Montalcino Sugarille 2006 94 $170Perfumed, evoking flowers, spices and underbrush. Rich and fleshy plum, licorice, tar and mineral flavors get a boost from a firm, lively structure. Shows fine density and extract, with a lingering aftertaste.

Pieve Santa ReStituta (cont.)wine Score Price

Brunello di Montalcino rennina 2006 92 $155 Warm, inviting aromas of black cherry, blackberry and toasted spices give way to licorice, tar and mineral flavors. Builds to a nice crescendo on the long aftertaste of spice and mineral. A modern style.

ca’ MaRcandawine Score Price

Bolgheri 2007 93 $160Though broad and fleshy, this shows no shortage of structure, with a fine minerally, earthy undercurrent. Despite ample black currant, black cherry and oak spice, this could move toward a decidedly Old World profile. Fine length. Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc.

Toscana Magari 2008 91 $85A dense red, boasting concentrated plum and blackberry flavors paired up with a strong dose of new oak. Well-integrated overall, and moderately long. Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc.

Toscana Promis 2008 90 $50Bursting with pure, sweet blackberry, black cherry and spice flavors, this is not overoaked, offering a vibrant structure, with firm tannins on the finish and nice length. Merlot, Syrah and Sangiovese.

cour

tesy

of

gaja

this stage of the project, I taste more varietal character than terroir in them. I find the Ca’ Marcanda wines distinctly New World in style, at one end of Bolgheri’s stylistic spectrum along with Grattamacco, I Greppi’s Greppi- caia and Le Macchiole. At the opposite end is Sassicaia, with its finesse and elegance, while Ornellaia, despite its modern feel, and Argen-tiera’s top red hold the middle ground.

In Piedmont and Montalcino, Gaja has built on the traditions of the regions, taking his wines in a more modern direction while retaining their sense of place. The Bolgheri project is the most radical, and the Ca’ Mar-canda wines have an international feel. It

remains to be seen whether they will develop a terroir character that is uniquely Bolgheri as the vines age, or maintain their varietal, New World character.

No matter the region, Angelo Gaja has been willing to try new techniques, in both vineyard and winery. The resulting wines have sometimes shocked traditionalists, yet over time, they have proven to remain true to their local identities. Over his half- century of work, Gaja has been able to honor tradition while at the same time make wines that can stand shoulder to shoulder with the top wines from France and the world in general.

Gaja’s Sperss vineyard in Piedmont

iTaly

barbaresco

bolgheri montalcino

wice a week, Angelo Gaja leaves his house in the … · 40 Wine Spectator • oct. 31, 2011 By...

Documents

Transcript of wice a week, Angelo Gaja leaves his house in the … · 40 Wine Spectator • oct. 31, 2011 By...