Muga Torre Muga Rioja 2020  £80.89

MUGA TORRE MUGA 

In Muga, they always use the finest materials and are open to new techniques that provide greater quality without losing authenticity. To produce each of their wines, they continue opting for traditional procedures: Through the natural process of fining, they eliminate the suspended particles that appear in the wine. They carry out the decanting by the traditional method of gravity. They are also the only cellar in Spain with a master cooper and three in-house barrel-makers.

Fermentation always starts naturally and spontaneously. The grapes will always ferment in wooden vats with indigenous yeasts and no temperature control. Maceration times can vary, up to two or three weeks. The total time that this wine spends in oak is 24 months, of which 18 are spent in new French-oak casks and the rest in oak vats. After ageing, there is light fining of the wine using fresh egg whites.

Here we have a wine with a very high depth of colour and purple-coloured glints around the rim denoting its youth. Good glyceric density, running gently down the sides of the glass, shows great volume.

On the nose, we have aromas of ripe, dark fruit, spicy aromas of black pepper, mineral hints of graphite, and very fresh reminders of thick undergrowth which make the pituitary gland fall in love with it so that they wrap themselves around us. Then mentholated nuances, rosemary and some smokiness from the ageing in finest quality oak appear.

On the palate it reveals smooth, soft tannin, elegant with very good acidity which gives it balance, Hints of liquorice appear and pepper is again present. A very long, elegant wine, with an up-front character and easy-to-drink.

You can pair this wine with strong red meat or game, or failing that enjoy it on its own.

RobertParker.com

95 Points

The more modern wine in the portfolio is the 2020 Torre Muga, which has notes of toast, smoke, sesame seeds, smoky bacon, spices, herbs and ripe berries. It is a wine they started producing in 1991, and the change in style also influenced the quality approach and selection of vineyards, grapes and oak for the barrels that they later applied to other wines. It has a polished palate with very fine tannins, chalky and elegant. It's a more approachable vintage, round, velvety and soft, though perhaps without the aging potential of 2021, but it’s very pleasant. It's long. They didn't bottle the 2020 from Aro, so some of those grapes might have finished in this bottle. It was bottled in December 2022.

Luis Gutiérrez