Costa Russi
⏳ Drinking Window
2024 - 2045
🍽️ Food & Wine Pairings
Slow-cooked beef braised in red wine, roasted wild game birds, and rich pasta dishes featuring fresh white truffles or wild mushrooms.
✨ Technical Specifications
Gaja's Costa Russi is a legendary single-vineyard expression from the heart of Barbaresco, Piedmont. The name 'Costa' refers to the sun-drenched slope of the hill, while 'Russi' honors the vineyard's former owner, Filippo Russi. Acquired by the Gaja family in 1967, this site is renowned for producing the most delicate, perfumed, and approachable of Gaja's single-vineyard bottlings. Cultivated on clay-limestone soils with a warm southern exposure, the Nebbiolo grapes yield a wine of exceptional elegance. For a period starting in 1996, Angelo Gaja famously declassified this wine to Langhe DOC to allow the blending of a small percentage of Barbera, aiming to balance acidity, before returning it to its historic 100% Nebbiolo Barbaresco DOCG status with the 2013 vintage. The wine undergoes meticulous aging, spending a year in French barriques followed by another year in traditional large oak casks, resulting in a complex bouquet of wild berries, violets, and subtle spice.
🍾 About the Producer
Established in 1859 by Giovanni Gaja in Barbaresco, Gaja is among the most influential dynasties in modern Italian viticulture. The estate's global stature was fundamentally transformed by fourth-generation icon Angelo Gaja, who introduced temperature-controlled fermentation, French barrique aging, green harvesting, and single-vineyard bottlings to Piedmont. Viticulture across the Langhe's classic calcareous marls focuses on biodiversity, soil vitality, and organic tenets tailored to climate adaptation, eschewing rigid certification schemes. Gaja is celebrated worldwide for its benchmark Nebbiolos—notably the flagship Barbaresco DOCG alongside historic single-vineyard crus Sorì San Lorenzo, Sorì Tildìn, and Costa Russi—and its Barolo cru Sperss. In addition to peerless expressions of Nebbiolo, the family revolutionized Piedmontese whites and Bordeaux blends through benchmark bottlings like Gaia & Rey Chardonnay, Rossj-Bass, and Darmagi. Today, the estate is led jointly by Angelo and his children Gaia, Rossana, and Giovanni.
🍇 Grapes
100% Nebbiolo