Winemaker Notes
The dense legs that this wine reveals are a sign of its enormous elegance. The purple-colored hues around the rim reflect its youth. On the nose you find black fruit aromas at the peak of ripeness, spicy black pepper aromas and wood-land herbs. Balsamic herb nuances appear with rosemary and some smoky notes from the ageing in top class oak casks, creating a harmony and balance which cannot be matched. In the mouth we can find the juicy, elegant tannins with a nice sharp acidity to balance the palate. Hints of licorice and the pepper return. A very persistent, elegant, enjoyable and approachable wine.
Blend: 75% Tempranillo, 15% Mazuelo, 10% Graciano
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Even better than the magical 2015, the 2016 Torre Muga offers a thrilling bouquet of cassis and assorted pure dark fruits, lead pencil, graphite, white flowers, and spice-laced aromas and flavors. While this cuvée is always thought of as the most modern in the lineup, it's far from it and has integrated oak, flawless balance, sweet tannins, and a gorgeous finish. It's beautifully done and just a thrilling bottle of Rioja that's going to evolve for 20-30 years or more.
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James Suckling
The purity of fruit to this is very, very intriguing with blackberries, graphite, and charcoal. Full-bodied. It radiates intense fruit with perfectly polished tannins. Subtle asphalt and blue fruit. Very long and beautiful. Racy. Tempranillo with graciano and mazuelo. Needs two to four years of bottle age. Try after 2021.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
I tasted a super young 2016 Torre Muga that had only been in bottle for some four months. But even so, the year seems to be approachable and open. Even if the wine has concentration and power, it has great balance and freshness. And it's drinkable now, even if it's going to get polished with some more time in bottle, where it should have a long life. This was the most modern of the wines in the portfolio, but I think the modern and traditional styles have been converging over the years, and nowadays there is not a huge difference between them. And for its age, it feels quite round, and it doesn't have edges or any harsh tannins; the oak is present but it's neatly integrated in the wine. It has to be one of the finest vintages for Torre Muga.
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Wine Enthusiast
This dark-ruby-colored wine has aromas of blackberry, cassis and black-olive paste. Flavors of black cherry and blackberry wash across the palate, backed by notes of clove, vanilla and orange zest. Plush tannins evaporate into a lingering finish. Jorge Ordóñez Selections.
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Wine & Spirits
The Muga family selects tempranillo, mazuelo and garnacha from their oldest vineyards in Villalba, fermenting the wine spontaneously in wooden vats and aging it in French oak barrels. This is a beautiful 2016, its generosity beginning with the sweet scent of pipe tobacco, opening to a wine that’s overtly floral, as if covered in rose petals, a sensual richness rising off the fruit depths of plum skins, currants and cranberries as the flavors continue to crescendo.
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Wine Spectator
This bold red is assertive, yet holds power in reserve. A thick texture, supported by muscular tannins, supports ripe flavors of currant, fig, cocoa, loamy earth and tar. Concentrated, but remains harmonious. Impressive, in the modern style. Best from 2022 through 2036.
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.