The Initials on the Label
The winery is named for a man who tried to stop everything.
Giuseppe Domenico Vajra — G.D. — was Aldo's father. When Aldo was fifteen, he was caught in a political demonstration at a military barracks in Turin. His father was in the secret services. A family scandal was not possible. The punishment was the countryside — sent to the family's smallholding in Vergne, to work the land through the summer.
The land did not interpret this as a punishment.
Within a few years, Aldo had taken over the holding, attended secret lectures on organic farming in a university classroom that officially did not exist, and, in 1971, became the first winemaker in the Barolo appellation to farm organically. When he registered the estate, he did not put his own name on it. He put his father's initials.
G.D.
I asked Francesca — Aldo's daughter, the one who sat with me in the winery and spoke for three hours about the family's history — what she makes of that gesture. She considered it for a moment. Then: the most generous thing you can do is name the achievement for the person who almost prevented it.
Giuseppe Domenico never intended to give his son a life in winemaking. He intended to give him a lesson. The lesson became a vocation. The vocation became around 100 hectares, 20 of them Barolo, the first organic certification in the denomination, a revival of Freisa and Riesling, and the stewardship of the Luigi Baudana estate in Serralunga.
His initials are on every bottle.
He sent his son away for a summer.
G.D. Vajra, Vergne, Barolo. Founded 1972. Aldo Vajra and family farm 80 hectares. First organic certified winery in the Barolo appellation, 1971. The estate name carries the initials of Aldo's father, Giuseppe Domenico Vajra.
