G.D. Vajra Langhe Nebbiolo J.C. Clare 2025

Thomas Jefferson tasted Nebbiolo in Piedmont in 1787 and described something that sounds nothing like Barolo: light, fresh, faintly sweet, a little fizzy. Two centuries later the Sacramento grocer Darrell Corti passed that quote to his old friend Aldo Vaira, and the Clare J.C. was born – J for Jefferson, C for Croce — Giovan Battista Croce, the Savoy court jeweler whose 1606 treatise on making Chiaretto di Nebbiolo inspired the wine. (It was called Claret until the Bordeaux wine council sent a letter asking them to stop.) Vajra makes it with partial carbonic maceration, whole clusters laid at the bottom of the vat, which leaves a faint prickle of CO2 and a wine built on crunch rather than tannic architecture. Chill it down and pour it freely. It is the most purely joyful thing Nebbiolo knows how to do.