Gaja, one of the most renowned producers of high-quality, estate-bottled wines in piemonte, traces its origins to 1856 when the Gaja family opened a tavern in their home town of barbaresco and began serving their own wines to accompany the food. By the end of the 19th century, the wines were already being bottled and supplied to the Italian army in Abyssinia, a highly unusual development in their home district of the Langhe, where a tradition of bottled wine assumed real significance only from the 1960s. The firm became an important force after the Second World War under the direction of Giovanni Gaja, who began an important series of vineyard purchases in what is now the Barbaresco docg zone, a strategy that has given the house a total vineyard area in 2014 of 100 ha/247 acres, dwarfing all other family-owned Barbaresco houses, and an excellent selection of superior vineyard sites.
