The history of Gaja Gromis property

Warning Warning - wine geekiness alert!...

In a recent Gaja and Burgers post, I talked about Gaja Gromis Barolo 2000, and raised a question about the connection of Gaja Gromis and Gaja Dagromis. For the wine geeks such as myself this connection needed to be explored. And since there was little-to-nothing on the internet regarding this topic, I emailed Gaia Gaja, the daughter of Angelo Gaja. She and I had recently met at a dinner at Donato Enoteca.

Dear Gaia,
...
I need a clarification. From my research on the internet, it is not clear what is the relationship between the Gromis Barolo, the Gromis Conteisa Cerequio Barolo, Conteisa Langhe and the Dagromis Barolo, and when some of the labels changed.


Dutifully Gaia responded. Here is the fascinating Gaja trivia that I learned.

In 1995 Gaja bought a propriety in La Morra. The property is 10 hectares, almost all included in the Cerequio vineyard. The winery (an obsolete building which they do not use) had a stock of older vintages. It took them a bit of time to understand what they had.

The propriety was named Gromis. The stock that was in the cellar was inspected, some vintages have not been sold because they did not like the quality, but some other vintages were very good (1970, 1982, 1989, etc) so Gaja released them with the label Barolo Gromis.

CONTESIA CEREQUIO BAROLO was the label Gaja devoted for the best Cerequio parcells (some vintages were already in the barrels at the moment of the acquisition, for example 1991 or 1993). So for those wines they took care of the last part of the ageing.

In 1996 Gaja decided to devote 4 hectars in the heart of Cerequio cru for the production of Gaja Conteisa Langhe Nebbiolo DOC which (like all of Gaja's single vineyards …Costa Russi, Sori San Lorenzo, Sori Tildin and Sperss) is a blend of Nebbiolo and Barbera, in this case 92% Nebbiolo and 8% Barbera.

The rest of the propriety was allocated to the production of Barolo Gromis.

Over the years Gromis has changed.

1. The name has been changed to Dagromis (which in Italian means "From Gromis").

2. Since 2001 the wine is produced not only with La Morra grapes but also with Serralunga grapes. Gaja family owns two proprieties in Barolo area - one in LaMorra and one in Serralunga (from which Sperss is produced). Serralunga gives quite austere and structured personality to Nebbiolo while LaMorra gives the most gentile and elegant character. Dagromis is the expression of both.


Much history and background information hides beneath a label that we so often don't pay attention to. One little question about Gromis led me down the path of deeper learning. The lesson in life - tug on the loose ends, you may just learn something!

Ciao.

Comments

Do Bianchi said…
great post, Iron... to many, the Gaja legacy seems cloaked in mystery but Gaia is very forthcoming when it comes to information on the history of the family's wines. She and I had lunch together the other day in San Vincenzo and she's a really delightful young lady... pretty humble and super nice, actually... turns out the Gajas are super cool folks...
Reeze Choi said…
Here have fews questions that I really don't understand...

1, If Conteisa Cerequio Gromis is some wine left in the oak barrel from Gromis, and Gaja take care of the last ageing period, then they bought the property since 1995, released 1991and 1993 is reasonable on the timeline, but why have Conteisa Cerequio Gromis 1997?? suppose 1997 is new vintage in that time, wasn't it?

2, Why DaGromis have two different label? seem like some vintage have two birds on the label, the other one is black and red such as 2003

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