Borsao Tres Picos 2008

Named by the three mountain peaks bordering this vineyard, this wine will take you by surprise. I remember first time I tasted this wine and was totally impressed with it. At that time, it was about $14.00 a bottle.I immediately picked it as one of the wines for my upcoming Spanish wine dinner – a when we came to the date, I was only left with few bottles for my wine dinner.

The inventory of Tres Picos was already gone. Sold out.It was very upsetting, because everybody loved the wine and wanted to buy some. That tought me a lesson to keep an eye on values like this one and buy it immediately when the vintage is released.

When I visited Bodegas Borsao, a producer of this wine, I began to understand why. Located high on the slopes of Moncayo Mountains, the old vine Garnacha have to struggle in really rough terrain. Low nutrition soil results in low yields (less than 2 tons per acre).

See my blog about my visit to Borja

But the quality of the wine is so high, it doesn’t need an additional support of heavy oak to get the body and concentration it needs to shine. There are only few thousands cases made for the United States market and they go fast.

The fermentation takes place in stainless steel tanks. Only half of the harvested grapes are aged in French oak barrels for 10 months. The rest is aged in stainless steel.

Despite that the wine shows huge complexity, and incredible balance. It was instant love every vintage, since I first tasted it. A friend just brought me a bottle of the latest, 2008 vintage. I couldn’t wait to open it and I was very impressed, as always, when I finally tasted it.

Intense aroma of dark cherries and light aroma of wild flowers. Beautiful, ruby red with purple tones. On the palate it offers you a huge expression of ripe fruit, blackberries or dark cherries, with light dust of cocoa and lovely spice that makes you to longing for more. It reminds me of a really good Cotes du Rhone red.

Garnacha here is incredibly balanced with just right amount of acidity and silky tannins. It’s worth to decant it or at least to leave the bottle open for an hour or so. It will slowly grow on your tongue, as you continue sip it. To me, this is very seductive, clean, elegant and impressive wine with a really long finish. Tres Picos is a wine of ridiculous value (as it always was) and I need to buy some more before it’s gone!