Winemaker Notes
The wine is bright and pale pink in color. On the nose it offers medium intensity, with notes of stone fruit, peach skin and subtle floral and citrus nuances. On the palate it is fresh and balanced, with sharp, well-integrated acidity to give it tension and length. The finish is refreshing and lingering, with reminders of stone fruit and delicate underlying citrus fruit. The 2025 vintage was defined by especially challenging weather conditions, with spells of heavy rainfall during the growing cycle, followed by a sharp temperature rise in the final phase of ripening. This context required very precise monitoring of the vineyard and careful decision-making to preserve the balance between acidity, alcoholic strength and expression of the aromas.
Ideal with shellfish and light pasta and rice dishes. Perfect as an appetizer or for drinking by the glass with salads and cold snacks.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The super young, pale and delicate rosé 2025 Rosado was produced with more than 60% Garnacha (perhaps a little more this year, which was a very good vintage for the variety) and the rest Viura, mainly from the Alto Najerilla zone of Rioja, where the soils have a mix of clay, limestone and iron that give them an intense red color, but the wine is still a pale pink. The must fermented in small oak vats for 15 to 20 days at 16 to 18 degrees Celsius and was kept with lees that were worked for three months before bottling. It has 13.5% alcohol, a pH of 3.19 and 6.02 grams of acidity, great parameters for freshness, and is still a bit reductive. This was just bottled a few weeks ago, but it should be better in just a couple of months. It has a core of rose petals and chalk, while the palate is where you have to pay attention. They got very good Garnacha in 2025, and the grapes were picked at the right time to get a balance between alcohol, freshness and acidity. It's not a small production, as 305,000 bottles were filled in February 2026.
Rating: 90+
Bodegas Muga is a family firm founded in 1932 by Isaac Muga and Aurora Caño. The first wines were made in an underground cellar, until in 1968 they decided to set up their own winery in a beautiful old 19th-century town-house situated in the city of Haro. The Bodegas Muga outstanding feature is that it always uses the finest materials, combining tradition with the latest advances in winemaking so as always to give its wines the very best quality without losing authenticity. Indeed, it is the only wine cellar in Spain which employs its own master cooper and coopers, who make all the vats for the cellar as well as the oak casks. The winery remains true to traditional winemaking methods such as racking the casks by gravity and fining the wine with fresh egg whites. Bodegas Muga has succeeded in combining the purest family tradition with an updated vision of the future which has allowed them to preserve their own personality and character.
Whether it’s playful and fun or savory and serious, most rosé today is not your grandmother’s White Zinfandel, though that category remains strong. Pink wine has recently become quite trendy, and this time around it’s commonly quite dry. Since the pigment in red wines comes from keeping fermenting juice in contact with the grape skins for an extended period, it follows that a pink wine can be made using just a brief period of skin contact—usually just a couple of days. The resulting color depends on grape variety and winemaking style, ranging from pale salmon to deep magenta.
Highly regarded for distinctive and age-worthy red wines, Rioja is Spain’s most celebrated wine region. Made up of three different sub-regions of varying elevation: Rioja Alta, Rioja Alavesa and Rioja Oriental. Wines are typically a blend of fruit from all three, although specific sub-region (zonas), village (municipios) and vineyard (viñedo singular) wines can now be labeled. Rioja Alta, at the highest elevation, is considered to be the source of the brightest, most elegant fruit, while grapes from the warmer and drier Rioja Oriental produce wines with deep color and higher alcohol, which can add great body and richness to a blend.
Fresh and fruity Rioja wines labeled, Joven, (meaning young) see minimal aging before release, but more serious Rioja wines undergo multiple years in oak. Crianza and Reserva styles are aged for one year in oak, and Gran Reserva at least two, but in practice this maturation period is often quite a bit longer—up to about fifteen years.
Tempranillo provides the backbone of Rioja red wines, adding complex notes of red and black fruit, leather, toast and tobacco, while Garnacha supplies body. In smaller percentages, Graciano and Mazuelo (Carignan) often serve as “seasoning” with additional flavors and aromas. These same varieties are responsible for flavorful dry rosés.
White wines, typically balancing freshness with complexity, are made mostly from crisp, fresh Viura. Some whites are blends of Viura with aromatic Malvasia, and then barrel fermented and aged to make a more ample, richer style of white.