2007 Darmagi

Angelo Gaja is well aware of the conflicting currents that are making production of rich, high-alcohol wines increasingly tricky. "Global warming started to show its effect in 1996," he told me. "We had very big wines in earlier vintages like 1971, 1961 and 1947, but now those kinds of vintages are much more common. The question we haven't been able to answer yet is: will more intensity of heat and light have an influence on the longevity of our wines? And of course, the more consumers insist on lower alcohol levels in their wines, the more the wines will have to be manipulated. Let us do our jobs as growers and winemakers." In recent years, like a number of his colleagues in the Langhe hills, Gaja has been green harvesting in a series of passes through the vines so as not to overdo this step in warm years when the fruit would be very likely to reach sufficient ripeness without cutting crop levels in mid-summer. Gaja is slow to pass judgment on new vintages and he's still assessing 2009, which he describes as "not a big vintage like 2007. Maybe it's more like 2008, which is a very interesting year, elegant and balanced but with less body than 2007." Two thousand eleven, he added, has been difficult for the dolcetto and barbera as there was a lot of drying of the grapes in the late-summer heat.

My most recent visit to Gaja was quite an experience, as I tasted all of the estate's 1989s, 1990s and 2007s. The 1989s and 1990s are reviewed on this site's What About Now article. Angelo Gaja, always loquacious on a wide range of subjects, says virtually nothing about his wines, an approach I have increasingly come to appreciate in an era where so many producers are constantly in pitch mode. Then again, Gaja doesn't really need to say anything, the wines speak for themselves. I tasted the 2007s at the winery in November 2009 and then again in New York in January 2010. Both times they were spectacular. Stylistically the 2007s remind me of the 1997s in terms of their opulence. Gaja's wines are often showy when young – which is certainly the case with the 2007s – but then close down in bottle for a number of years, sometimes many years. My impression is that the Costa Russi and Conteisa are the most likely of these 2007s to offer the widest drinking windows throughout their lives with a minimum of cellaring. Fermentation and malolactic fermentation take place in steel. The wines then spent approximately one year in French oak and a second year in cask prior to being bottled. As has been the case for a number of years now, Gaja's Langhe wines incorporate a small percentage of Barbera. On a final note, it's great to see Gaja's daughters Gaia and Rossana increasingly involved in the winery. They, and their younger brother Giovanni, have big shoes to fill, but couldn't have asked for better teachers than Angelo and Lucia Gaja.