The fog was still lying in the Tanaro valley when I left Alba at 08:00, and it stayed below me the whole way up. Barolo village sits at about 300 metres; Vergne, the last hamlet before the road tips over towards La Morra, sits higher, and when I parked outside the G.D. Vajra cellar the vines were in clear late-October sun and the valley was a white sea. Vergne is the highest part of the Barolo commune, somewhere between 350 and 480 metres, and it is one reason I keep bringing groups to Piedmont, in the north-west of Italy, in autumn. The Langhe explains itself best from the top.
Giuseppe Vaira met me at the door in a fleece, a pruning knife in his back pocket that I do not think he had noticed. We had planned to start in the cellar. He looked at the light, changed the plan, and we walked out to the vines first.
A farm in 1968, an estate in 1972#
Aldo Vaira, Giuseppe’s father, was sent to his grandparents’ farm at Vergne in 1968, still a teenager. He stayed. In 1972 he founded the estate and named it for his own father, Giuseppe Domenico, using the old spelling of the family name, Vajra with a j. So the label says Vajra and the people say Vaira, and both are correct.
Aldo and Milena Vaira began it; their three children divide the work today. Giuseppe makes the wine and speaks for the house; his sister Francesca looks after hospitality and the visitors; their brother Isidoro runs the vineyards. The family also farms a small holding in Serralunga d’Alba under a separate label, Luigi Baudana, taken on in the late 2000s. Those wines are Serralunga through and through, firmer and slower than anything from Vergne.
I came to the wines backwards. A bottle of Bricco delle Viole at a restaurant table in Brno, a decade or so ago, made me redraw my map of Barolo, which until then had put the perfume in La Morra, the muscle in Serralunga, and nothing in between.
Bricco delle Viole at 480 metres#
The Bricco delle Viole is a south-facing ridge above Vergne, from about 400 to 480 metres, among the highest vineyards in the Barolo zone. The soil is the Tortonian marl of this side of the appellation, the Sant’Agata Fossili formation, pale, calcareous and full of fossil shell, which gives Nebbiolo perfume and a softer tannin than the sandstone of Serralunga and Monforte. Aldo’s grandfather planted the oldest vines here in 1949. The name means hill of violets, for the flowers that come up early in spring along the ridge.
Altitude does two things here. It delays ripening, so the Nebbiolo comes in well into October, often among the last in the commune, and it keeps the nights cold, which holds acidity and aroma. Giuseppe’s phrase for it was “slow fruit”, and he did not mean it as a complaint.
In the cellar the approach is classic and unhurried: fermentation in steel and in wood, a long and gentle maceration, no rush to extract, then years in large Slavonian oak botti. Barolo must age 38 months before release, 18 of them in wood, and nobody at Vergne is looking for shortcuts. There is no zero-sulfur story here and no manifesto. The vineyards are farmed organically in practice, the wines are made with care, and the result is classic Barolo at family scale. I have written elsewhere about why I pour classic wines alongside natural ones; Vajra is a good part of the argument.
Freisa, Riesling and the outsiders#
Two wines here have nothing to do with Barolo and tell you as much about the family. Kyè is a Langhe Freisa, a close relative of Nebbiolo that much of Piedmont let slip as too rustic. Made with the same patience as the Barolo, it comes out dark-fruited, peppery and firmly tannic, a wine for a plate of salumi in November. Pètracine is a dry Langhe Riesling grown at altitude, where the cold nights suit the grape, and it surprises every guest who thought Piedmont was red-wine country. There is Barbera, Dolcetto, Moscato and Pinot Noir as well. Nobody here seems to think a grape is beneath them.
Stained glass in a Barolo cellar#
The thing everyone remembers is the glass. The Vaira cellar has large stained-glass windows by Padre Costantino Ruggeri, a Franciscan friar and artist, and when the morning sun comes through them the botti stand in bands of blue and amber. The family’s stated reason is simple: the people who work in this room every day should see something beautiful while they do it.
“A cellar is where the wine waits,” Giuseppe said, standing under the largest window. “It seemed wrong to make it wait in the dark.”
I have rarely seen a cellar built for the workers rather than the visitors. It changed how I read the wines.
One glass: Bricco delle Viole 2019#
We tasted in the barrel room at 14 °C.
Beside it, the Barolo Albe, the estate’s blend from several parcels: all the perfume, less patience required.
Lunch above the fog#
Francesca had set a table in a room off the cellar. It was the last week of October, so there was a white truffle from Alba; the legal season runs from 21 September to 31 January, and the best of it comes from late October to December. Tajarin, the thin egg-yolk pasta of the Langhe, with butter and the truffle shaved over it at the table. Before that, carne cruda cut by hand and dressed with oil and lemon, with the Freisa. After it, a wedge of Castelmagno, the crumbly cheese from the mountain valleys west of here, with the Bricco delle Viole, a pairing the Langhe has made for a century and has no reason to stop. Bonet, the chocolate and amaretto pudding, closed it with a glass of Moscato.
We talked about the 1949 vines and how many the family loses each year, and about Riesling in the Langhe. Giuseppe is patient with technical questions, and I had several. My own observation, not his: the old quarrel between barriques and botti has faded until most young winemakers in Barolo shrug about it.
Vajra on tour#
On my Piedmont tour based in Alba, Vergne is the high point of the Barolo day, literally: the belvedere at La Morra in the morning to read the crus from above, fifteen minutes to Vajra for the cellar, the glass and four or five wines with a family member, then lunch there or in Barolo village below. In season, the Saturday truffle market in Alba comes the next morning. Guests on the Friuli orange-wine route sometimes ask me, over an amber Ribolla, which classic Italian red I would set beside it. This is the one.
Bring a jumper for the cellar and proper shoes for the ridge; if the light is right, ask to walk to the top of it.
I drove down into the fog in the early afternoon, and it closed over the car before Barolo village. Somewhere above me, the violets were still getting their sun.
