Gaja Gaja Sperss 2021 750ml

The 2021 Barolo Sperss is a jeweled ruby color and has a beguiling matched balance of power and finesse. Seamless from start to finish, it offers notes of black raspberries, sweet flowers, fresh herbs, and apricot. It’s saturating with a medium-bodied richness that expands through the palate, with refined, polished tannins, even acidity, and a profound length on the finish. It’s a harmonious and resonating wine with a lot to enjoy over the next several decades.

With fruit from Serralunga d'Alba, the Gaja 2021 Barolo Sperss is marked by a distinctive ferrous note of rusty nail or soft earth that frames a core of dark fruit. The wine is exceptionally balanced and beautiful with depth and a high level of fruit purity. Unlike the Conteisa, which ends with a sweeter floral note, this wine is decidedly salty and stony on the finish, giving it a harder edge in terms of structure.

Enticing red fruit flavors of cherry, strawberry and rose are the highlights of this taut red, shaded by iron, mint and tobacco notes, with terrific harmony and a lingering, chalky finish. Everything is in the right place, but this just needs time. Best from 2029 through 2050. 400 cases imported.

Underbrush, tobacco, toasted hazelnut, menthol and grilled herb aromas slowly take shape on this focused red. On the structured elegant palate, taut refined tannins and fresh acidity provide an ageworthy framework for raspberry compote, juicy Marasca cherry, orange zest, white pepper and star anise. It already has layers of depth and loads of finesse, but hold for even more complexity. Drink 2022–2030. (Kerin O’Keefe)

More forward and in a more earthly realm than the dizzying heights of the Conteisa this vintage, but it’s so endearing and immediately delights. The aromas range from elderberries and black cherries to brambleberries and Chinese spices. Full-bodied and structured with powerful tannins that encase bright and forthright blue fruit, which is polished over by a sheen of glimmering acidity. Long finish. Delicious now, but better in 2022.

This is a slightly more subdued vintage of this legendary wine, albeit just as sophisticated as past editions. The 2014 Barolo Sperss opens to gorgeous aromas of dark fruit, wet earth and white truffle. The vineyards in Serralunga d’Alba produced much less fruit than average and suffered from bouts of downy mildew during the rainy seasons. But Serralunga d’Alba fruit is also harvested late, and that extra time was important for achieving grape ripeness targets. The wine presents depth and complexity within the context of a thinner vintage. Having said that, the bouquet is spectacular.

The 2014 Barolo Sperss is an attractive wine from Gaja’s vineyards in Serralunga. There is good depth to the succulent black cherry, plum, smoke and licorice flavors, although it doesn’t quite have the explosiveness or power of the very best years. Because of the wine’s slender personality, the oak is a bit more evident than is typically the case. The Sperss also feels a bit forced in terms of extraction and oak, especially next to the Conteisa, where the choices have turned out to be more successful in bringing out the best the vintage has to offer. (Antonio Galloni)

Cherry, hay, leather, iron and spice aromas and flavors are the hallmarks of this linear red. Chewy and compact, with fine complexity and a lingering finish. Best from 2023 through 2040. 350 cases imported. (Bruce Sanderson)