King of the Hills : Angelo Gaja Is the Force Behind Italy’s Wine Revolution : His prices were too high, they said. He didn’t follow tradition. He used French oak. But Gaja awakened the sleeping giant of the Italian wine in dustry and now they’re all trying to catch up.

At 56, Angelo Gaja quivers with barely contained energy, like a springer spaniel about to be taken for a walk. “My dearrr, it is good to see you!” he purrs, striding from the office of his winery in the Langhe hills of the Piedmont region of northwest Italy. “Everything OK? Very good,” he adds hurriedly, satisfied that the world still spins on its proper axis for his guests. (Gaja does not enjoy hearing about difficulties, which he takes personally and immediately sets about trying to correct.)

“All rrright, ‘nduma!” he exclaims in Piedmontese, adding, in standard Italian, “Andiamo, we go.” He punctuates this, Victor Borge-style, with an extended forefinger, jerking his arm in a full circle and simultaneously corkscrewing forward, as if forcefully hand-cranking an antique car.

His walk is a brisk strut, verging on a trot. Gaja once had back problems requiring surgery, and this may explain the exaggerated way he squares his shoulders, which makes him appear to be leaning backward.

His black hair, flecked with steel gray, is combed straight back, almost short enough to be a brush cut, accentuating how square his large head is. His deep-set, intense eyes, combined with his crackling energy and an almost wolfish grin, make him seem demonically possessed . . . and having a good time at it.

Winemaking lends itself to outsize personalities. But even when measured against others of his sort, Italy’s Angelo Gaja is one of a kind. You will start no wine bar fights by declaring him the most important person in Italian wine. After all, several of his wines sell for as much as the most expensive red Bordeaux, which means upward of $100 a bottle. The only room for argument is the precise scope of his one-man Italian wine revolution.

Throughout his career, all of Gaja’s energy has been focused on a single objective: to catapult the once-obscure Barbaresco wine to world attention and respect. The grandeur of Gaja’s success today--his wines cost, and are collected, like the greatest red Bordeaux and Burgundies--makes it difficult to grasp just how far he and Barbaresco have come in world esteem. After all, the journey only really began in the Seventies.

To visit Gaja (his name rhymes with “hiya”), you must make your way to the village of Barbaresco (population 656) perched atop a steep hill in the Langhe, a mountainous area near Turin. It is an unlikely locale for someone who daily receives a world of visitors. Barbaresco is a remote place, nothing like the tourist-populated hill towns of Tuscany.

Even once you’re in Barbaresco, getting into the Gaja wine fortress is no small feat. The only access is a 15-foot-high green metal folding door fitted under a massive wood-beam overhang. It is the only opening in a street-long barricade of newly painted but otherwise anonymous buildings, some of which are Gaja’s offices. To enter, you must present yourself before a security camera, press the admittance button and state your business. A sign explains in Italian, French, German and English that although visitors are welcome, the winery cannot receive anybody without an appointment.

Yet Gaja is happy to welcome visitors, especially those from outside the Langhe. “In 1973 Robert Mondavi came here to visit the winery,” Gaja says, as if it were an event of biblical significance. Mondavi is a hero to Gaja, who is a full generation younger than the 82-year-old California winemaker, and he tells the story often. Ask Gaja about his overwhelming success and he will say: “I was very lucky--I had many sleepers.” Sleepers? “Yes, sleepers.” It’s a private joke about his fellow Langhe winemakers that began with the Mondavi visit.

“It was the first time I met him,” recalls Gaja reverently. “He asked me to accompany him to look at the other vineyards of the area. We had lunch together and spoke about wine and so on. He offered a lot of compliments. I was so proud of the area.

“After lunch, when we walked back to the car, he stopped me and said, ‘Don’t you hear a noise in the air?’

“I tried to listen. I said, ‘No, I don’t hear any noise.’

“So he said, ‘OK, probably I am wrong.’

“Then we went out on the balcony of the restaurant to look at the view. And again he mentioned the noise. And again I said, ‘I can’t hear any noise.’ After that, we went to look at more vineyards. And again, he mentioned the noise.

“Finally, we returned to Barbaresco, and on the way back I said, ‘Now look, what is this joke about the noise?’

“And he told me, ‘Don’t you hear it? The people in the Langhe are snoring. Not just at night, but during the day.’

“This was a very important lesson,” Gaja says. “So I told this story to some of my colleagues. They were not happy at all. In fact, they were offended. This surprised me. It was such a good lesson. Can you imagine what a man like Mondavi could be capable of doing in an area like the Langhe?”

Gaja could. Mondavi’s achievement in California was to convince Americans that a California wine could be as good as the great French wines--and worth a comparable price. Doing this involved both winemaking technique and not a little marketing psychology.

Gaja faced comparable, though not identical, challenges. Unlike Americans, Italians were already convinced of the quality of their own wines, but they were unwilling to pay anything more than pocket change for them.

“It was only after I visited California that I began to think differently,” Gaja says. “The California producers were investing a lot of money, spending a lot of capital. So their interest was in making wines that were capable of giving them a return on their investment. This meant trying to equal the most expensive wines.”

But Gaja had a problem that neither California nor French winegrowers had to wrestle: the Nebbiolo grape. For centuries it has been the pride of the Langhe. Both Barolo and Barbaresco are 100% Nebbiolo. But it is a beast of a grape, highly acidic and ferociously tannic. Its flavors, often (and inadequately) described in terms of tar and roses, are original and somehow magical. Only in the Langhe, specifically in the neighboring districts of Barolo and Barbaresco (the two are separated by only a few miles), does Nebbiolo accomplish what Pinot Noir does in the Co^te d’Or of Burgundy: It’s a red wine that forever lingers in the mind like first love.

In exchange for such beauty, the locals long ago learned to live with the beast, even to love its beastly qualities. They tried to tame it, sometimes harshly.

“I remember when my father and other winemakers of his generation used to put their Barolos on the roof to soften them up,” recalls Aldo Conterno, who at 65 is one of the Langhe’s best (and most modern) winemakers.

“In the old days the Barolos were so tannic because of how they were fermented,” Conterno says. “They used to leave the juice and then the brand-new wine in the vat with the [tannin-rich] grape skins for two months or more. Today, the whole maceration process rarely goes for much more than 30 days.

“After the wines were drawn off the skins, the Barolo would remain in casks for five, six, seven years, sometimes even more. And then it would be transferred from the cask into glass demijohns.

“Even then, the wine could still be pretty tannic. So sometimes, to soften it up, they would put the demijohns outside, on the roof, for the summer and part of the winter. Of course it was oxidized all to hell by then but, anyway, they liked that taste.”

Gaja recalls--and recoils from--the same memories: “I remember some older customers coming here. And my father would open old bottles. They were enthusiastic, exclaiming, ‘This is like Marsala!’ ”

Gaja still can’t forget the indignity. “My God, Marsala!” he groans. “I decided that if they wanted Marsala, then they could go to Sicily.”

In both California and Italy, if improvements were going to be made, somebody would have to have both ambition to burn and capital to risk. The goal, ultimately, had to be a place at the fine-wine pinnacle, which meant France.

Ambitious Californians discovered that the great Bordeaux and Burgundies all were aged in small oak barrels called barriques. Each holds only 60 gallons, as opposed to the traditional huge Barbaresco casks.

These barriques, especially when brand-new, give both red and white wines a distinctive flavor and a certain suppleness. Wines aged in them--anywhere from three months to two years--are thought to taste finer and more complex--in short, more like expensive French wines.

But you can’t just put Nebbiolo wine into the barrel and stand back, as Gaja learned after years of unsatisfying experiments. Because a new barrel imparts its own oak tannins to a wine, putting already-tannic Nebbiolo into one is like adding a new tea bag to an already brewed cup.

On the other hand, oak tannins have the desirable ability of bonding with the color pigments of the wine, preventing them from oxidizing. The wine emerges both darker and brighter, which was just what Gaja wanted. Barbaresco aged in these barrels emerged as supple and faintly sweet-smelling as a baby from a fragrant bath. With the 1978 vintage, Gaja felt that he had succeeded. “That was the first Barbaresco that I can say was truly mine, an expression of Gaja,” he says.

Even then, barriques were largely unknown in Italy. Although barrels of all sizes can be found in every corner of the country, the idea of using oak to flavor a wine--and having that flavor be considered a good thing--was absent. An older Piedmontese winegrower once recalled how he had to sell a Barolo he’d made for half the regular price because he had stored it this new way and it had an oaky taste. “I should have asked for twice the price,” he said with a laugh.

Gaja made no such mistake. Gaja’s prices, as much as his winemaking, have been a sticking point. For so long, Italian wines were synonymous with cheapness, in much the same way that in the ‘50s and ‘60s, “Made in Japan” evoked an image of flimsy, cheap goods. Even in Italy, no self-respecting Italian could imagine paying anything like a respectful price for a bottle of wine.

These low prices were not only reflective of Italy’s long-standing poverty and the ubiquity of wine but also of the cultural imperative for modesty. This is especially forceful in the countryside.

Gaja isn’t having any of this forelock tugging. “Here there is a fantastic heritage,” he proclaims. “But you have to believe. Not to believe is to be a loser.

“I’m not sure that I have a superiority complex. But I haven’t an inferiority complex either, I assure you. I have a lot of respect for some of my colleagues. But some of them say about my prices, ‘It’s not right. It’s crazy. It’s stupid.’ Their wines are good. I respect them. OK, fine. But I am sure that I can sell my wines, that I can find customers for my wines. And I have! That’s all.”

With this, Gaja is very nearly beside himself with richly savored righteousness. “It’s easy to say that the prices of my single-vineyard Barbarescos are near the price of first growth Bordeaux,” he declares. “But the first growth Bordeaux chateaux each sell 20,000 cases. And Gaja sells just 1,000 cases of each of the three single-vineyard wines. Maybe these [prices] actually create problems. Perhaps one grows stronger, but at the same time, you will also get more beat up.”

Gaja had no intention of getting beat up by his fellow Langhe winegrowers. He knew that by putting Barbaresco in barriques, he was cocking a snoot at virtually everyone in the Langhe. The local winemakers adhered to tradition with unquestioning devotion. Using barriques was more than adventurous. It was an affront.

But Gaja shut them out. He had set his sights on the outside world, in the process beginning a pattern of local isolation that has since become almost hermetic.

For example, until very recently, few of his fellow Langhe winegrowers had ever seen Gaja’s winery, although it is virtually teeming with journalists, restaurateurs and foreign winemakers. Even now, only a handful of local producers have made it past the big green door, mostly young ones.

“I was not open like the California producers, who exchange experiences in the cellar and open their cellars to their colleagues,” he admits. “Here, the door was totally closed. It was not easy for them to enter and see what I was doing. It was easier for me to speak with other people outside the Langhe.

“My colleagues were not exactly jealous. But not giving them the opportunity to enter the winery and visit easily was a way of not giving them ammunition.

“I had some enemies. In our field, professional jealousy is a grass that grows up quickly. Sometimes I heard voices about my friends not being happy about what I was doing. But at the end, they were not aggressive about it. And they are still not. I have always tried to keep a low profile. You can’t push up the flag.”

The idea of Gaja trying to keep a low profile would bring a many smile among winemakers. They’d say he not only “pushes up the flag” but that he salutes it on the bugle.

“OK,” he says genially. “Good, fine. You are right. But I can assure you, I never tried to achieve popularity here. I have friends here, some writers, etc. But I always asked them not to write about Gaja in the local press--unlike my colleagues, who want to be spoken about locally.

“The reason was to not impose my success on them. Success is not something that makes your colleagues happy, more in Italy than any other country. We say, ‘Farsi perdonare il successo’--to have your success forgiven. If you want to live peacefully among your neighbors, it becomes important to obtain this forgiveness. And it gets you more respect.”

Today, the outrage over putting Nebbiolo in barriques has mutated into flattery: Dozens of Langhe winegrowers are imitating Gaja, using barriques regularly. Elsewhere in Italy, they have become commonplace. Thousands of producers use them.

Yet Gaja had more worlds to conquer. His original ambition was to make his claim to fame (and fortune) through his Barbaresco wine. It was an improbable vehicle, if only because the unpicked plum hanging on the tree all along was Langhe’s already acknowledged great wine, Barolo. It has cachet, which even Gaja does not deny.

Even with Gaja’s influence on the Langhe, it is Barolo that dominates, like an overpowering brother. Indeed, Barbaresco literally didn’t exist as a separate wine until 1894. Effectively, it really didn’t exist, even in Italy, until Gaja brought it world attention.

In fact, until 1961 his father made Barolo, though from purchased grapes. Then Gaja convinced him to limit their production to grapes from their own vineyards. Everything they had was in Barbaresco. The die was cast.

“I don’t know why I didn’t sell Barolo,” he says. “It would have been much easier to sell Barolo. My colleagues saw being a leader in Barbaresco like being a leader in Grignolino.” The Grignolino grape produces an inconsequential pale red wine that once was popular among the local farmers.

“I had many opportunities to buy land in Barolo over the years,” he continues. “Not doing so was a bad decision. It would have been possible to have a second line of Gaja wine, exactly like the first line of Barbaresco. It would have helped much more the diffusion of Gaja wines in foreign markets. I would do it differently today if I had the chance to do everything over again.”

In 1988, Gaja finally made his play for Barolo, spending almost a million dollars for a 69-acre vineyard. At about $14,000 an acre, part of it already planted, it was a steal. Vineyard land in Napa Valley sells for at least $40,000 an acre, unplanted.

That he could walk off with one sizable vineyard parcel, in a site already known to be superb and in an area as famous as Barolo, confirms the truth of what Robert Mondavi revealed to Gaja 20 years ago: They are still snoring in Barolo.

Gaja, as always, is wide awake. Sperss, the name he has given to his Barolo vineyard in full-throttle Piedmontese, is sure to have wine fanciers scratching their heads in half a dozen countries around the world. Sperss is Piedmontese for “nostalgia.” Originally, it was to have been Sperss Ed Bareu, “nostalgia for Barolo,” but that was reluctantly rejected as too unwieldy.

There is an air of triumph in Gaja’s “return” to Barolo. The vineyard he purchased once supplied the grapes his father used to make a Barolo under the Gaja name. The return was seemingly blessed by the good vintage gods, as his first three bottlings of Sperss were 1988, ’89 and ‘90--three of the best vintages enjoyed in the Langhe for decades.

But the real triumph, the unspoken one, is that Gaja intentionally sells his Barolo for less than his three single-vineyard Barbarescos, even though its quality is very nearly its equal. Where his signature wines command as much as $125 a bottle, Sperss asks $60.

That was just the beginning of the expansion of Gaja’s empire. Since then he has purchased yet another Barolo vineyard, swallowing whole the 22-acre vineyard called Cerequio, widely recognized as one of Barolo’s best sites.

After that, he forayed south to Tuscany, where he purchased 27 acres (and leased 12 more) of the ancient estate formerly called La Chiesa di Santa Restituta in Brunello di Montalcino, one of Italy’s highest-priced wine districts. Brunello wines, made from the Sangiovese grape, regularly sell for between $25 and $150 a bottle. Gaja’s Brunello, called Pieve Santa Restituta, sells for $50.

In yet another part of Tuscany where wines fetch top prices, the district of Bolgheri, Gaja recently signed a long-term lease on 42 acres of vineyard planted to the nondescript white wine grape Trebbiano. He intends to uproot the vines and replant with a mix of such red grapes as Sangiovese, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. The first wine will appear seven or eight years from now.

In 1993, his most public purchase was the old palazzo directly across the street. Known simply as Il Castello by the locals, it has long been uninhabited and used as a distillery and warehouse. After tortuous negotiations--because it is a historic site, plans for its renovation are subject to supervision and approval by various governmental commissions--major reconstruction work is set to begin in 1997 to create a 13-room hotel and restaurant.

Located in front of the winery, some observers see it as Gaja’s monument to his achievements. But the real monument to Gaja’s ambition is his vineyard holding in his native Langhe. With the two Barolo vineyard purchases, Gaja has become the second- or third-largest owner of Langhe vineyards, with 247 acres of vines in Barbaresco and Barolo. For the Langhe, where the average holding is just 3.7 acres, this is a massive amount of land.

Characteristically, it was effected quietly. When I casually ask several Langhe winegrowers how much vineyard they think their famous neighbor owns, their guesses represent only a fraction of Gaja’s holdings.

I mention this to Gaja, who smiles and says, “They don’t think about it, my dear. And I would like to keep it that way.”