Gaia & Rey Chardonnay Langhe DOC 2018 A.Gaja

The Gaja 2018 Langhe Gaia & Rey is a beautifully pure Piemontese expression of Chardonnay. It opens to a light gold/straw color with brilliant luminosity. This vintage is delicate but determined, powerful but fragile all at the same time. The bouquet is shy to start off and requires (at this young stage when I tasted the wine) ample time to aerate. Once it unwinds, the wine offers fresh citrus, orchard fruit, toasted almond and spice. Only partial malolactic fermentation is completed, so the wine's energy and inner nerve is very much intact. Flint and mineral play important supporting roles. Some 16,000 bottles were made.

I have almost always tasted new releases of Gaja in person at the winery in the company of Gaia Gaja or someone else from her family. Obviously, these on-site visits offer a better opportunity to report findings, ask questions, make vineyard visits and collect all kinds of interesting news, facts and quotes. Because of COVID-19, I tasted these samples at home under ideal circumstances that allowed for consistency of serving temperatures, stemware and decanting. I was also able to spend more time with each bottle in front of my laptop to muse and reflect, and I returned to many of these wines over multiple days to chart their evolution. Tasting at home allowed me more time to revisit my notes and tweak my comments. This relaxed approach made this year's tasting of Barolo and Barbaresco one of the most enjoyable of my career, and one of the most beautiful wines discovered in this tasting of 900-plus samples is Gaja's 2016 Barolo Sperss.