G.D. Vajra

History

The Vaira family has owned land in Vergne, a hamlet of the commune of Barolo, since the 1920s, and the family's high-altitude Bricco delle Viole vineyard carries vines planted in 1931, 1949 and 1968. The estate in its current form traces to 1972, when Aldo Vaira, who had been sent at age 15 in 1968 to work the family's Barolo property, produced his first vintage. He named the winery G.D. Vajra after his father, Giuseppe Domenico Vaira, using a variant spelling of the family surname, in part because Aldo was still too young to register the license in his own name.

In 1971, while still a university student, Aldo Vaira adopted organic farming, becoming one of the earliest growers in Piedmont to do so; the estate's vineyards have been farmed without synthetic chemicals ever since and are certified organic. Bricco delle Viole, rising to 480 meters on the western ridge of Barolo, became the family's benchmark site, and the estate later added other Barolo-commune vineyards (Fossati, Coste di Vergne, La Volta) plus the Ravera cru in neighboring Novello. In 1985 Aldo planted the estate's first dedicated Riesling vineyard in Fossati, using massal selections from Alsace, the Palatinate and Geisenheim, among the earliest plantings of the variety in Piedmont; a second Riesling parcel followed in 2000 at Bertone, in the commune of Sinio.

Around 2008, retiring growers Luigi and Fiorina Baudana, who had no heirs to continue their small estate in Serralunga d'Alba, connected with the Vaira family, and by the 2009 vintage Giuseppe, Francesca and Isidoro Vaira had taken over the property's roughly 4 hectares of vineyard in the Baudana and Cerretta crus, running it as a separate label out of the original cellar. Today Aldo and Milena Vaira's three children handle day-to-day operations alongside their parents, Giuseppe in the cellar, Francesca in commercial and hospitality roles, and Isidoro in the vineyards, making G.D. Vajra a first-and-second-generation family estate.