Nestled in the village of Vergne, on the western limit of Barolo, Vaira Aurelj is an exciting project founded by two talented young brothers Francesco and Giacomo Vaira. Coming from a family steeped in winemaking tradition, Cocco and Giacomo have inherited their father’s love for viticulture and winemaking as well as tiny plots in Fossati DOCG and within the hamlet of Vergne. Unified by a desire to do something to honour this land and this gift, they used their father’s name, “Aurelio”, spelling it “Aurelj” in line with the local dialect, and thus set up Az. Agr. Vaira Aurelj in 2018. Despite only releasing their first wine to the market in 2020, they have in five short years made waves with their dynamic, novel and insurgent take on this traditional region and its styles.

The Vaira’s 4h holdings in Vergne are a mere football field away from MGA vineyards like Bricco delle Viole, Serradenari and Coste di Vergne, and in fact, are geologically identical to Coste de Vergne MGA. They have the same southeast/southwest exposure, altitude of between 100-450 meters above sea level, and similar calcareous blend of limestone and clay. Through a quirk of bureaucratic injustice however, these plots ended up being divided between three different municipalities, and classified in the no (DOCG) man’s land of Narzole, outside the demarcating lines of La Morra and of Barolo.

Undeterred, they have embraced this exclusion as the beating heart of their project - to craft exceptionally fragrant and elegant Nebbioli that defy the limitations of labels and denomination boundaries, that understand the elemental similarities that bind us are more powerful than the surface differences, that their land is capable of producing wines that can be every inch as refined as they are rebellious. 

Their first wine, “Controcorrente” or ‘Against the Tide” in 2019, set a clear marker down of this intent. A labour of love to resuscitate and carefully celebrate the almost extinct, mutated Rosè clone of Nebbiolo, through an unheard of 100% single clonal bottling, this is a unicorn of a wine in the region. In 2020 the “FZ” or ‘Fuori Zona’ (outside the zone), from Nebbiolo clone Lampia, made another polemical statement, this time for Vergne, that their land and soils are as valuable as those in the amphitheatre of Barolo vineyards just over the hill. And finally from 2020, the Barolo Fossati, sitting on the boundary of Barolo and La Morra, combining intensity, perfume, and a vertical mineral energy from the bedrock.