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Gaja is an icon, and as an icon she defies any "neutral" assessment. You can turn it any way you want, either the patina is scratched or it is polished up, the patina. This is not so much due to the icon, but to the way we deal with dream images. It starts with the price - what costs a lot must also be worth a lot. Availability emerges: what is rare is the object of our desire. Finally, it is the occasion on which an icon is set up, in this case drunk. It can't be everyday life!

Gaja 1994 ca. 100 € Yesterday, we had friends over, a Gaja came onto the table, into the decanter, into the glass. A homage to our guests, because I have already been to Piedmont with them, I stood in front of the forbidding gate in the hilly village of Barbaresco, where the icon is at home. Not accessible, not approachable, at best reachable via an intercom.

I have not earned the right to speak to the icon. In this case, I am not what I have been all my professional life, a journalist, a television journalist. I don't come from television and I don't come from any newspaper. I simply come from my home and stand there because dream images belong to me - to all people, actually. Professionally, you often chase them, privately, you just stop for a moment to soon return to everyday life.

So yesterday was not everyday life, it was icon day. And it came as it had to come. Everyday life was stronger. We had a good Barbaresco in the glass, already slightly degraded or let's say matured to restraint.

Balanced, one says, even dense, one could still say. But the power has completely given way to an elegance that seems somewhat withered, restrained in the so often quoted "Barbaresco nose": wild berries, liquorice, tar and roses. The roses are no longer fresh either, but have retained their silky structure.

As you can see, my handling of the iconic Gaja is not carefree either. Have I now damaged the patina or put it in a new light? I leave the judgement to others, become sober, objective: it was a good, well matured, differentiated, beautiful wine. Nothing more. But it was a Gaja.

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