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
Founded in 1859 by Giovanni Gaja in the village of Barbaresco, Piedmont, Gaja has evolved into one of the world's most celebrated and visionary wine estates. The house was catapulted to international acclaim under the transformative stewardship of Angelo Gaja, who revolutionized Italian viticulture by pioneering green harvesting, temperature-controlled fermentations, French barrique aging, and single-vineyard bottlings. Today, alongside legendary Nebbiolo expressions such as Barbaresco, Sorì San Lorenzo, and Sperss, the family crafts benchmark whites like Gaia & Rey, fine grappas, and acclaimed wines from their Tuscan estates in Bolgheri and Montalcino. Uncompromising in quality and innovation while deeply rooted in their heritage, the Gaja family produces intensely expressive, structured, and age-worthy masterpieces that define modern Italian fine wine.
🍇 Grape Varieties
100% Nebbiolo