Bodegas Muga Seleccion Especial 2016
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The 2016 vintage, officially ranked as “Very Good”, produced wines showing great balance between freshness and power and revealing expressive aromas, very ripe tannins, depth and length of flavor. This Special Selection Reserva 2016 exhibits a medium-deep, dense garnet/black cherry color. The nose is complex with ripe, red berry and black fruit coming to the fore with hints of black pepper and subtle, creamy, smoky oak, followed by notes of coffee and a touch of mint. The entry on the palate is smooth and elegant and develops with good volume towards an elegant, harmonious mid-palate revealing fresh, ripe red berry fruits and spice. The whole is underpinned by a powerful tannic structure and fresh acidity. This powerful yet elegant Reserva offers great ageing potential.
Blend: 70% Tempranillo, 20% Garnacha, 7% Mazuelo, 3% Graciano
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A very pretty, manicured young red with plum, berry and dark-chocolate character. Medium body and round tannins that are focused and firm. Delicious, succulent finish. Plenty of subtle fruit and supple tannins take you to where you want to go in fine Rioja red. Drinkable now but linear and tight. Give it some time. Better after 2021.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Always a terrific wine, the 2016 Selección Especial is based on 70% Tempranillo, 20% Garnacha, and the rest Graciano and Mazuelo. Almost Rhône-like with its spicy, meaty, gamey style, this beauty offers lots of red and black currants, cedary spice, incense, and tobacco aromas and flavors. It's medium to full-bodied, has terrific balance, silky tannins, and is just a class act. The 2015 is a richer, more opulent wine, while the 2016 shows a touch more freshness and elegance. Both are beautiful vintages worth buying, cellaring, and drinking.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2016 Muga Selección Especial is wine in the upper tier of the world's highest acclaimed red wines, and this vintage merits this level of accolades. TASTING NOTES: This wine shows a powerful presence in its aromas and flavors of concentrated black fruit and substantial weight on the palate. Serve it with a grilled ribeye topped with diced shallots. (Tasted: March 21, 2021, San Francisco, CA)
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The current vintage of the red that is their first option to have with food is the 2016 Selección Especial, whose grapes are selected from terraced vineyards in the Montes Obarenes and the Sierra Cantabria, from vines averaging 35 years of age. It fermented in oak vats and matured in French oak barrels for 26 months, and it's kept in bottle for at least 18 months before it's sold. This is serious and has freshness and some restraint in the palate; it's much more expressive, floral and aromatic and with more-integrated oak than the wines from five+ years ago. It's a more elegant vintage than the 2015 and every bit as good, or a tad better. Winemaker Isaac Muga considers 2016 a very good harvest. It was bottled in April 2019. This is among the best vintages of Selección Especial. Rating: 94+
Other Vintages
2019-
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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.