Fine Wine Innovation

Giovanni Gaja, who hosts a Club dinner this month, reveals the secret of his family’s wine success.

WORDS NICK JONES

Even in an industry of timehonored practices, ancestral estates and traditions as aged as gnarled vines, Gaja is something of an aberration.

“We don’t have a website or social media, but we communicate in a very intimate and personal way by traveling around the world and meeting our consumers,” says Giovanni Gaja, whose great-great-grandfather founded the family winery in the Piedmont region of northwest Italy in 1859.

But the Gaja family’s indifference to 21st-century marketing practices shouldn’t be misconstrued as dyedin-the-wool conventionalism. On the contrary, Giovanni’s father, Angelo, is credited with revolutionizing winemaking in Piedmont and helping to untether Italian wine from its postwar, cheap plonk image.

Today, Gaja is synonymous with quality Nebbiolo-based reds—Barolo and Barbaresco (the tiny village where the first Giovanni Gaja established a winery), but it also produces award-winning varietals in Tuscany and, most recently, in Sicily.

After completing his education in economics in Milan and working in finance for a few years, Giovanni, 30, joined the family business in 2018. Together with his eldest sister, Gaia, he focuses on Gaja’s export markets.

“This is a wonderful job and I am very lucky,” he says. “Being a winemaker means being able to keep one foot in nature and enjoy its beauty. At the same time, this job allows me to travel to different countries to promote the wines, meet people and discover new cultures.”

Just as Giovanni has had to adapt to an environment of travel restrictions over the past year (he will appear virtually at this month’s Club dinner), evolution is at the heart of the winery’s approach to its craft.

“To me, tradition is synonymous with transition,” Giovanni says. “It means being able to adapt and keep up with changing times while maintaining the knowledge and beliefs of the past. Today, for example, it means adapting to the challenges brought by climate change, from warmer summers and extended periods of drought to spring frosts and rising levels of alcohol.”

Driven by an unshakeable belief in the potential of Barbaresco, Angelo

Giovanni Gaja

Gaja, who began working with his father in 1961, has always been an innovator.

In the 1960s, Angelo introduced a new method of pruning Nebbiolo grapes. In the ’80s, he experimented with small oak barrels to boost the structure and concentration lacking in some vintages. He was also the first winemaker to plant nonindigenous varietals (Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc) in the Langhe area.

Alongside this contrarian spirit, Giovanni says, his father touts the importance of skepticism.

“Thinking that our way of working is the only possible one doesn’t leave margins for improvement,” Giovanni explains. “We are always open to evaluate and learn about new techniques and protocols because that’s a way to improve.”

Gaja’s fans around the world would drink to that.

GAJA WINE DINNER WITH GIOVANNI GAJA  June 11  6–9pm  New York Ballroom  ¥24,200 (guests: ¥29,040)  Limit: two guests per Member  Sign up online