In the silence of the fermentation room at G.D. Vajra, stained glass windows throw light onto the stainless-steel surrounds and make you feel as if you’re standing inside a kaleidoscope that’s waiting to be turned into magic.
And when you’re in the hills of the Langhe in the northern Italian region of Piedmont, that is precisely what happens, because they bottle the magic and turn it into some of the best loved wines in the world.
It’s hard to imagine a better beginning to a shared travel experience that we’ll always refer to as ‘that perfect day in Barolo’: a morning wine tasting with a front-row view of its vineyard origins; a Piedmontese lunch allowing the wines to express their true purpose; and to conclude the afternoon, witnessing how ‘squeezing’ the grapes’ remains results in my Digestivo of choice.
We’d landed at G.D. Vajra thanks to a nod from our favourite Weinfreundin in Berlin, who suggested it would be a fine way to immerse ourselves in Barolo: the legendary wine of the region, with buffalo tannins that make it unthinkable for the first five years of its life, and increasingly unforgettable thereafter.
On a short, but very smooth, flight, we got to taste two different expressions, and compare the big guys with their little brother, a straight, amiable Nebbiolo, made from the same grape used for Barolo but without the same rules and regulations.
We met a spicy cousin Barbera d’Alba and got curious about a more delicate member of the family we’d never heard of: Dolcetto. There are some who are dismissive of its soft and gentle nature, but as committed supporters of the Cape Cinsaut revolution, we fell in love at first slight.
By the time we were done, we’d tasted way more than what was in the glass. It felt like we’d dipped out toes into the deep end of the Langhe, where the upended sedimentary layers of ancient seas can make the soils on either side of a fence line completely different. But most of all, it made me hungry to see whether these wines would live up to their star billing over lunch.
With no plan in place, we asked our winery host (who was clearly as passionate about her home as she was knowledgeable about its wine) for advice and she answered instantly with ‘Osteria Veglio, it’s in La Morra, about a 10-minute drive. Maybe they have a table?’
A call from the carpark secured ‘un tavolo per due’ and we set off on a winding road through Barolo in its winter costume: a patchwork blanket in muted green and sepia, draped snugly over the countryside and interrupted, only on occasion, by a medieval town or ancient villa.
Like its neighbour, Barbaresco (also made from Nebbiolo), one of the regulations to qualify as Barolo is that the vines must be grown on ‘hillsides only’, so it’s quite a ride for terroirists. And perched on a hill overlooking a valley of sleeping vines, Osteria Veglio is the sort of place that makes you wish you were Italian and could take this quality of life for granted.
A multigenerational table walked in; the grandmother exquisitely groomed and wearing a black cardigan with intricately embroidered roses from baby pink to magenta, fastened up the front with brass buttons; the granddaughter flicking back her dark, glossy bob and wearing a pristine white blazer. The maître d' took Nikki’s puffy down jacket and treated it like haute couture.
We ordered classic dishes that we would come across on menus many times over as we traveled through the region: Vitello tonnato, Tajarin al ragù, Agnolotti, Bunet. And although we had an inkling at the time, we didn’t realise quite how high Veglia set the benchmark and that we would continue searching for a meal that matched the expectation created that day.
Centred on a rosette of wafery meat slices, as if served with an ice-cream scoop, was a tonnato sauce so buttery and discreetly ‘tuna’ that I might never eat one again without thinking it too fishy. The pasta pockets of Agnolotti del pin exploded like little stew bombs and reflected the light in a high-gloss coat of meaty juices. Had the place not been packed, I’d have licked the plate clean.
And then there were ‘due bicchiere di vino, per favore’, a house Nebbiolo and a Dolcetto, that did what great food wine should do: never upstage what’s on the plate, but never be shy to sing the occasional solo. And as I looked around the room of satisfied locals swirling their glasses and deciding whether or not to add truffles to their pasta, it all started making sense.
The alp-encircled city of Turin might be the capital of Piedmont, but its beating heart is undoubtedly the commune of Barolo, pumping Nebbiolo through the veins of the entire region, keeping things running smoothly and allowing everyone else to let their hair down. Which brings us to the final play of this one-day game: the Romano Levi distillery about a half-hour drive from Barolo.
Grappa and I have solved many of the world’s problems. I see it as extracting the very essence of things really, because it’s made from pomace aka the debris left over from winemaking. We heard about Levi’s thanks to our favourite artisan-baker friend and earmarked it for the hand-drawn labels and history, dating back to when Grandpa Levi made spirits using a direct-fire still in 1925. His wife continued the craft, then his children, Romano and Lidia, and now Romano’s mentee, a non-family member called Fabrizio Sobrero, keeps the home fires burning.
It wasn’t immediately clear from what existed online, whether they were open for tastings, but we locked in the GPS and went nonetheless. When we nudged the gate, it pushed open, and we wandered into a building that looked deserted. Inside was a distillery, reminiscent of Nieu-Bethesda’s Owl House, not only in mood but because the spaces between glass beakers and old copper stills, were covered with owls – wooden carvings, ceramic statues, framed photographs.
It describes itself as a ‘museum’ and in many ways it is, down to the cobwebs preserving Romano’s desk. Casual, perhaps, but it works, all the way through to a cunningly designed waste-free system. To start, the pomace isn’t just any old discard, it’s from Barolo, Barbaresco, Dolcetto et al. And once it’s had the life boiled out of it and been distilled, the leftover material is dried out and then used to fire the still. Genius.
It’s a distinctly analogue system, shoveling fuel in on one side and clambering up ladders on the other to check that everything’s still working. And the still itself is a relic. Cutting the heads and hearts and tails of the distillate is done by feel (and ear!), but the resulting spirits are intense, pure, and expressive, and far smoother than you’d expect from something that’s only had one trip down the condensation tube.
After a mostly-Italian-some-English explanation of the process Fabrizio led us into the old Levi kitchen for a tasting, between an unused fire-fueled stove and shelves of bottles infusing with botanicals. The pours were punctuated by, ‘Allora! One moment! Controllo Grappa!’ as Fabrizio exited to tend the still himself. Leaving us to consider the fruit expression in the same grappa, one aged for four years in Oak and one aged for six years in Ash.
We tasted firewater made with Moscato, which Fabrizio described as super soft and aromatic, and one made by steeping heads of chamomile flowers, which speaks of Lidia’s influence, but the standout for me, by some margin, was adorned with a wonderfully weird, strawberry-girl illustration (the original work a sketch by Romano) and turned out to be a Barbaresco, barrel-aged for three years and bursting with life.
Perhaps I’d had a bit too much, but in that heady tasting room I felt as if I’d stumbled into a place that truly understood the value of the life blood running through its veins. Only they’d found a way to dig even deeper, down to a DNA level, and trap the genie in a lamp. Like I said, Perfetto.
Look out for part two where we will share the full wine-tasting experience and all the Barolo (and other) learnings in more detail.