Winemaker Notes
Can be enjoyed on its own or with strong red meat or game.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This is laser-guided with wet earth, blackberry and mahogany. Very perfumed. Full body, yet tight and focused with supporting tannins. Very polished and clear. Pure. A blend of tempranillo and graciano.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
There was no 2012 or 2013 produced, so we jumped from the 2011 to the 2014 Torre Muga, a blend of 70% Tempranillo, 20% Graciano and 10% Mazuelo from the middle of the slope in the village of Villalba de Rioja (where the Muga family comes from). It combines the freshness of the higher-altitude vineyards of the Prado Enea with the power of the lower ones used for the Muga range. It fermented in oak vats and had a shorter élevage of only 15 months (it used to be more), and the different varieties were kept separated until the penultimate racking when they were blended. There is more volume here and some more spice from the élevage, with an open and expressive nose. It's medium-bodied with some fine tannins and less weight in the mid-palate than other vintages.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2014 Bodegas Muga Torre Muga is impressive in how well it combines its sleek New World look without sacrificing Old World traditions. TASTING NOTES: This wine is bold, elegant, and persistent. Its aromas and flavors black fruit, oak, and earth should pair it beautifully with a well-marbled grilled ribeye. (Tasted: March 6, 2019, San Francisco, CA)
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Wine Spectator
This rich red delivers ripe plum and currant flavors backed by licorice, tobacco, loamy earth and toast notes. This is dense on the palate, with wellintegrated tannins and balsamic acidity. Drink now through 2028.
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.