2021 G.D. Vajra Barbera d'Alba, Piedmont

Here’s another food-friendly wine from beautiful Piedmont. The 2021 Barbera d'Alba shows a dark purplish hue and saturated fruit flavors of dried blackberry and black cherry. There are hints of crushed mineral or oyster shell as well. The wine’s medium thickness would work across a breaded veal steak. Fruit is sourced across various sites with different soil types.

G.D. Vajra earns top scores for its perfectly designed portfolio of Piedmont wines. Well balanced against various price points (and all very reasonable), the estate offers excellent high-end Barolos from single vineyards, the super accessible and charming Barolo Albe, and a whole range of lower-end wines that are all creative in terms of graphics and design and extremely innovative in terms of winemaking, blends and overall approach. The G.D. Vajra portfolio should be a model for all sorts of up-and-coming wineries. Just this past year, the winery team created a family library with more than 2,000 books on winemaking, geography and more. The oldest volume dates back to the 15th century.

91 points ML robertparker.com

G.D. Vajra Barbera d’Alba comes from the wonderful range of Vajra estate vineyards, belonging to three different geological ages: Tortonian, Serravallian and Messinian. It’s fermented for an average of 20 days on skins and matured for no less than 12 months, respecting the rhythm of nature. This is a fine blend, a charming wine at the crossroads of finesse and texture.

Fruit for our Barbera d’Alba is harvested usually in the second half of September. Each vineyard is picked at its optimal ripeness, so as to capture the richest treasure of aromatics and phenolics. Quite often it takes more than 10 days to complete the entire harvest. Each parcel is then individually fermented for 15 to 20 days on average, at temperatures below 30°C. While Barbera is often treated with shorter and vigorous macerations, we love to work with gentle punch downs and pumpovers for longer periods, in order to extract only the finest tannins from its skins. Malolactic conversion in stainless steel, followed by racking. Aged for a minimum of 12 months, mostly in stainless steel vats but with a minimal component (5 to 10% at most) aged in French oak. 

Giuseppe Vajra