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Viinin Kuvailu
The Story
This wine made history when it became one of the earliest single-vineyard bottlings of Nebbiolo in Piedmont with the 1967 vintage. Sourced from the GAJA winery's top growing site, San Lorenzo, located just south of the village of Barbaresco in the famed cru Secondine, the wine is made with 95% Nebbiolo grapes and 5% Barbera. This practice hails back to the earliest era of Barbaresco, when the lighter-bodied Barbera was traditionally blended into the tannic Nebbiolo to temper its power and structure.
In 2000, with the release of the legendary 1996 vintage, GAJA decided to reclassify this wine and use the Langhe DOC appellation on the label, ommitting the Barbaresco DOCG. In part, the motivation for this change was purely semantic. As the number of single-vineyard bottlings grew in the 1990s, their popularity began to eclipse the importance of the traditional, classic Barbaresco, a cuvee or blend of many different vineyards. In a sense, the gesture was meant as a testament to the winery's steadfast belief that Barbaresco is one of the great wines of the world and should be accompanied rather than overshadowed by its single-vineyard fellows.
Vuosikerta 1996
Italy Vintage Report by Tb: 1996 was an excellent continuation of the preceding year. Temperatures exceeding 30°C at the beginning of June accelerated and balanced the start of the blooming period. The summer growing season enjoyed ideal conditions, in which the grapes were allowed to ripen slowly and evenly. The autumn rains did not present any mould problems due to the cool temperatures. Nebbiolo grapes were thick-skinned, very concentrated and ripe. The 1996 Barolos and Barbarescos are abundantly fruity, supple and robust wines, whose quality is on a par with the 1990 vintage. In Tuscany Chianti and Montalcino enjoyed extraordinary success. Montepulciano did not do quite as well, but producers in Tuscany considered 1996 to be nearly every bit as good as it was in 1995. Starting with this vintage Angelo Gaja classified his legendary single-vineyard Barbarescos and Barolos as IGTs. Gaja said that the reason for doing this was his desire to differentiate his previous modern single-vintage wines from his family’s pride, the traditional Barbaresco, whose importance he wanted to emphasise as his only DOCG wine. The venerable Chianti producer, Castello di Ama decided that from 1996 on it would focus on the production of Chianti Classico, placing less emphasis on its single-vineyard wines, the Bellavista and La Casuccia.
The wines are still maturing very nicely, even if the Chiantis should, in my opinion, be enjoyed soon due to their sheer deliciousness.