When speaking about the wines of Gaja, one must realize they’re speaking about a man, the growth of an entire region, and the actual juice that’s in the bottle. It’s impossible to separate the three. Angelo Gaja (pictured on the right) was an individual that forever changed the perception of Piemonte and Italian wine on the global market. Largely taking over his family estate in 1961, Angelo recognized the international disinterest in fine Italian wine and he began a journey of reinventing the vinous identity of his home village of Barbaresco and the nation as a whole.

Early on, there were a few key innovations that Gaja is largely recognized as pioneering in his region. Firstly, he dramatically lowered vineyard yields across his properties to focus on developing intense concentration at the cost of of overall volume.… Read the rest