In November 2003, in a Milan hospital, the Italian winemaker Ezio-Voyat died after lapsing into a short coma. Voyat, in his 80s, was an underground legend among Italian oenophiles, an eccentric maestro of aristocratic wines from the mountain region of Valle d'Aosta, on the Alpine frontier with France. A massive, Falstaffian man with a voracious appetite, he had, for most of his life, made his living as a casino croupier. But back in the sixties Voyat began making one of the most legendary reds the peninsula had ever produced — a Chambave Rouge so rare that most sommeliers have never heard of it, let alone drunk it.
