The winery is located in Paglieri, Barbaresco. In total, the family owns 20 hectares of land, including 15 hectares under vine, in the most vocated areas of Barbaresco and Barolo. The flagship is the Pajé vineyards.
The story is about the Roagna family in Barbaresco practically-since forever. As early as the late 1800s, the Roagna family, Vincenzo and Rosa, ancestors of Luca Roagna (now owner with father Alfredo, and conductor of the winery) used to make Barbaresco wine. Luca’s great-grandmother, Rosa, was widowed in 1920 due to Spanish fever. Grandmother Maria Candida Rocca married her grandfather Giovanni Roagna in 1929, bringing as her dowry the vineyard of Montefico. In those years the winery was in the center of the village of Barbaresco. They purchased the 1953 Pajé farmhouse. and in the same year Father Alfredo was born.
The amphitheater of the Pajé
The Pajé is an amphitheater, a classic tongue of land typical of the Langhe. The Roagna family owns 2.09.64 hectares, 0.52 of which are allocated to Crichet Pajé.
Grandfather John began to learn more about the Pajé amphitheater, and by 1958 he selected the part designated for the Crichet Pajé which at the time bore the name Reserve o Family reserve. The choice was made because that part of the hill, much more limestone, gave more structured wines, which needed more time to mature and expressed the greatest complexity of all the vineyards. Since 1978 Papa Alfredo decided to give the name Crichet Pajé. Crichet, from the Piedmontese dialect, means small hill, which is the area where Nebbiolo expresses itself best.
For many years Luca’s grandfather and father produced Crichet Pajé, and the rest-that is, the remaining part of Pajé with Asili and Montefico-were vinified together to give rise to classic Barbaresco. Only in some great vintages was vinification by parcel.
Luca Roagna
Luca started winemaking in 2001, post wine school at the age of 20, thanks to his father who left a lot of room in the winery for the talented scion who already had very clear ideas from the beginning, about: extreme quality and enhancement of the vineyard Working and winemaking by single vineyard. In 2007, he separated batches of plants over 50 years old (now over 70 years old) for the now famous selections of Old Screws.
The study of the great French wine areas, especially Burgundy, brought Luke to an extreme and, almost, sublimation of the concept of quality: very low yields, fierce bunch selections, technically unimpeachable winery work, exploiting absolutely unimpeachable technical-scientific personal knowledge, the result of passion, experience derived from many generations of winemakers, personal skills.
In the Pajé, with a south-southwest exposure with an average altitude of 230 meters, all the plants come from ancient mass selections: Luca likes to talk about “individuals” because each plant is different from the other. All together they create that symphony well represented by wines with exceptional characteristics
Also important is the ongoing study and research of seed plants to obtain new individuals that are more resistant to classical phytopathologies and that can also adapt to climate change, but this is for the long-term future.
Speaking of soil, the Pajé vineyard is the soil with content of active limestone among the highest present in the entire district, very white soils and extremely poor, leading to a balanced production without the need for thinning or extreme practices in the vineyard.
Crichet Pajé Reserve is born.
Since 2023 it has decided to further enhance the identity of its flagship wine by introducing a very small selection of Crichet Pajé elevated to Reserve status, a very limited selection with exceptional characteristics: a Crichet Pajé that was bottled in its eighth year, with extra aging in cement for a decade or so. The idea is close to that of champagne
late degorgement
, which is to leave the wine in a neutral container, almost as if it were in a large bottle, without exchange with the outside, with lees at the bottom that keep the wine in reduction and help it increase the complexity and elegance.
Today the Roagna family produces a range of wines that are now at the top of their respective appellations, and Barbaresco Crichet Pajé fits, along with other stupendous representatives of the Langa, into the qualitative elite not only nationally but internationally, where comparative tastings with the world’s greatest oenological expressions underscore its undoubted value.
