Winemaker Notes
A deep, very dense black-cherry color.
The nose reveals ripe, red berry fruit aromas together with notes of spices (pepper) and forest floor against a backdrop of coffee variations, such as milk coffee toffee and roasted coffee beans mingling with subtle well-integrated oak.
Silky on the palate with tannins showing through, indicating the wine’s youth and good ageing potential and providing an elegant and balanced structure.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
The balance and purity to this wine is really impressive with blackberries, black truffles and dark fruit. Wet earth. Full body. Tight and compact. Structured, long and powerful. Superb length. Compressed and polished texture. Drink in 2022.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2015 Selección Especial checks in as 70% Tempranillo and the balance Garnacha, Mazuelo, and Graciano that's an old vine and terroir selection. Aged 6 months in new oak followed by 24 months in 90% French oak and 10% American oak, it has a beautiful bouquet of blueberries, black raspberries, crushed violets, incense, and cedar. This gives way to a full-bodied, rich, powerful wine that has an incredible sense of elegance and finesse on the palate. It's a brilliant Rioja that can be drunk today or cellared for 10-15 years or more.
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Wine Spectator
Velvety yet vivacious, this red has a lovely texture. Expressive flavors of maraschino cherry, red currant, orange peel, clove and vanilla are supported by round tannins and citrusy acidity. Fresh and focused, in the traditional style. Drink now through 2030.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2015 Muga Selección Especial is a classic example of a high-end Rioja. TASTING NOTES: This wine packs plenty of primary fruit in its aromas and flavors. A hint of savory spices joins in at the end, making it an excellent pairing with highly-seasoned, grilled pork ribs. (Tasted: May 14, 2020, San Francisco, CA)
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.
Hailed as the star red variety in Spain’s most celebrated wine region, Tempranillo from Rioja, or simply labeled, “Rioja,” produces elegant wines with complex notes of red and black fruit, crushed rock, leather, toast and tobacco, whose best examples are fully capable of decades of improvement in the cellar.
Rioja wines are typically a blend of fruit from its three sub-regions: Rioja Alta, Rioja Alavesa and Rioja Oriental, although specific sub-region (zonas), village (municipios) and vineyard (viñedo singular) wines can now be labeled. Rioja Alta and Alavesa, at the highest elevations, are 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, great body and richness.