A Second "Three"

Goodness, some of the recent postings have been bigguns'. The extravagant events and wines aren't exactly providing me with much opportunity to catch up quickly here. Luckily, tonight's wine was simply opened at home on a regular old "school" night and it's a wine that has seen another vintage already added to The List. So, I won't repeat myself too much when referring to the wine or winery. Who knows, I might even be able to think about starting in on another post right away.

884. 2005 Brancaia Tre (IGT Tuscany - Italy)

I'm not exactly sure how this happened but that other bottle of Tre I mentioned was a more recent vintage than this one - even though we opened it almost two years ago. The 2006 vintage is "charted" way back at #213 despite the fact that we're only opening the 2005 tonight. I can't say that it was a conscious decision to age the wine, especially since some commentators have stated that this is a wine that's ready to enjoy as soon as you take it from the bottle shop shelf.

I can attest that the additional ageing didn't hurt the wine at all though. If anything, it probably mellowed it out some because this seemed a little more balanced than what I remembered from the 2006. The earlier bottle was polished off while Boo and I were making and canning tomato sauce. Tonight, we enjoyed it as we chowed down on tomato sauce (not that same sauce though; it's long gone). Do I sense a theme happening?

You can go back to the earlier post to read a bit more, but I like the story about Tre (Italian for "three" BTW) and how it's a blend of three grapes - Sangiovese, Merlot and Cab Sauv - is sourced from Brancaia's three different vineyards and is the third wine that they produced.

Given all that, I think we may just have to try a third vintage down the road and show that, indeed, three's a charm. (Now to see about that next post.)