Bodegas Muga Prado Enea Gran Reserva 2006
-
Suckling
James -
Parker
Robert - Decanter
-
Spectator
Wine
Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Blend: 80% Tempranillo, with 20% Garnacha, Mazuelo and Graciano
Professional Ratings
-
James Suckling
A powerful and layered red with ripe berry, cedar and licorice notes. Roses and sandalwood. Full body, very deep and intense. Changing all the time in the glass. A superb wine. Drink or hold.
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2006 Prado Enea is a phenomenal bottle of traditional Rioja at its best. A blend of 70% Tempranillo, 20% Garnacha and the remaining 10% Mazuelo and Graciano aged for a long time in oak and bottled before release. This is a practice quite common from yesteryear, but that is a true rarity today. The technical data provided talks about incredible parameters, 14% alcohol and a pH of 3.39, both extremely low for a warm vintage like 2006. The grapes are sourced from higher-altitude terraced plots where the climate is cooler and drier and the soils are rich in clay. This is a wine that is not automatically produced every year. The wine spends its elevage in oak containers of different size, origin and age for no less than three years. The nose is intoxicating with a superb mixture of tertiary and more primary aromas like old furniture, cloves, cracked pepper, incense and cigar ash plus cherries in liqueur (that Garnacha!). The palate is medium-bodied, with great freshness (Jorge Muga tells me the pH is stabilized with aging in barrel), acidity and balance, with a silky texture, ultra-fine tannins and great persistence and length. This wine feels younger than it is, and seems to be aging at a glacial pace. With the stuffing and balance it has this should make very old bones, and drink greatly throughout its life. Superb! At this quality level the price seems like a bargain. 90,000 bottles produced. The next Prado Enea will be 2009 as they didn't get what they look for in this wine in either 2007 and 2008. Those were two cold vintages, and 2007 had 100 liters of rain during the harvest. Prado Enea is harvested in November and in 2008 there was frost at the end of October.
-
Decanter
While the Muga family now produces some ultra-modern styles, this sits perfectly in a classical spot, all woodsmoke and red berries. The 80% Tempranillo matured for three years in cask makes for a finely balanced, typical Rioja.
-
Wine Spectator
The dense texture carries harmonious flavors of plum, tobacco, licorice, mineral and smoke in this polished red. Well-integrated tannins and orange peel acidity keep this balanced. The floral, spicy finish brings you back for another sip. Drink now through 2021.
Other Vintages
2016-
Suckling
James
-
Enthusiast
Wine -
Suckling
James -
Parker
Robert -
Dunnuck
Jeb -
Spectator
Wine
-
Suckling
James -
Spirits
Wine & -
Dunnuck
Jeb -
Spectator
Wine
-
Suckling
James -
Parker
Robert -
Enthusiast
Wine -
Dunnuck
Jeb -
Spectator
Wine
-
Suckling
James -
Parker
Robert - Decanter
-
Dunnuck
Jeb -
Enthusiast
Wine -
Spectator
Wine
-
Parker
Robert -
Suckling
James -
Enthusiast
Wine -
Spectator
Wine
-
Parker
Robert
-
Parker
Robert -
Enthusiast
Wine -
Suckling
James
-
Suckling
James
-
Suckling
James
-
Suckling
James -
Parker
Robert -
Enthusiast
Wine -
Spirits
Wine &
-
Parker
Robert
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.