2018 Gaja Rossj-Bass Langhe 750 ml

Icon. Iconoclast.

Gaja is one of the most remarkable producers in the world of wine—a true revolutionary who upended conventional wisdom in Piedmont, then became perhaps the most important winery in Italy.

Angelo Gaja’s vision for producing powerful wines with plush fruit—in contrast to the stark, tannic bottles of the time—launched the modern revolution in Barolo and Barbaresco. Back then, he was regarded as heretical, but like many geniuses, the world caught up to his thinking. His wines are now collector must-haves…with the $400+ price tags to match.

When Angelo Gaja took over his family’s business in Barbaresco in 1970, he borrowed techniques from Bordeaux and Burgundy to bring deeper fruit, silkier textures, darker colors, and a more youthful balance to what had historically been fairly rustic, hard wines. At the time, his use of temperature-controlled fermentation in stainless-steel tanks, smaller barrels for aging, and extra attentiveness in the vineyard were controversial. The results of that experimentation, however, made his winery an icon and paved the way for the modernization of the entire region.

His Rossj-Bass is the calling-card white for the estate. A Super-Piedmontese blend that combines 95% Chardonnay and 5% Sauvignon Blanc, it’s a perfect example of how Gaja’s outside-the-box thinking delivers prodigious quality. This seamless synthesis of crisp Chardonnay with Sauvignon’s brushstrokes of elderflower and jasmine makes for a full-bodied, complex white wine that could only be made in this particular corner of northwest Italy—and it’s Gaja through and through.