Bodegas Muga Reserva Unfiltered Rioja, Spain, 2021 (#1 Best Value Wine of the Year 2025)

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Overview of the Wine
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.

Winemaker
Isaac Muga

Grape / Blend
70% Tempranillo, 20% Garnacha, 7% Mazuelo, and 3% Graciano

Origin
Rioja, Spain

Winemaker's Tasting Notes
This 2021 vintage has a bright ruby-red colour, with medium depth and a garnet-tinged rim. On the nose you discover an intense, complex wine. Aromas of wild fruits of the forest (blackberries and blueberries) come to the fore, with hints of spices. On the palate it is long, elegant and nicely balanced. Its sharp acidity is perfectly integrated and it has soft tannins. The finish is very long and full of fruit. Perfect for drinking now but, thanks to its good balance and structure, it can be kept in the bottle for several years. 

This wine will be an excellent accompaniment to meat dishes like a ribeye steak, as well as with charcuterie and all kinds of casseroles.

94 Points - Jeb Dunnuck
The winery’s flagship, the wine that introduced Muga to the world, the 2021 Muga Reserva is Tempranillo-dominant, with Garnacha, Mazuelo, and Graciano filling in the gaps. A larger-production wine, it offers tremendous quality, fermented in wooden vats using indigenous yeasts, the grapes separated by quality, soil type, and village origin. This one in particular is from a beautiful vintage and practically beams in full-bodied concentration, with supple, silky tannins and light touches of oak spice, cedar, balsamic, and white pepper. A new release, it should continue to thrive another 15-20 years. 

94 Points - Wine Advocate
The grapes for the 2021 Reserva (sold as Crianza in Spain), mostly Tempranillo with some Garnacha Tinta, Mazuelo and Graciano, were picked late in a cooler year when they finished the harvest the 20th of October, with plenty of times for the grapes to develop full aromas and flavors and complete ripeness. It fermented destemmed and lightly crushed in oak vats with indigenous yeasts, separating qualities, villages and soils, and matured in 80% French and 20% American oak barrels, 20% of them new, for 24 months, with racking every eight to nine months. It's a textbook example of their style in a very good year, with power, concentration and clout, elegance and freshness. It was a very harmonious year; the cycle was long and the tannins ripened to perfection. It's terrific and more so for the volume they produce (984,000 bottles of it). It was fined with egg whites and bottled in January 2024. 

93 Points - James Suckling
A plush yet fresh Rioja showing blackberries, dark plums, fine spices, cocoa powder and a touch of roasted red chile peppers. Medium- to full-bodied and juicy, with firm, fine-grained tannins and a long, bright finish showing some graphite, blackberries and dark chocolate. Tempranillo, garnacha, graciano and mazuelo. Drink now or hold. 

92 Points - Wine Spectator (#1 Best Value Wine of the Year 2025)
This is fresh and minerally up front, opening to reveal a fine mesh of chopped cherry and plum skin flavors, with fragrant hints of ground coffee, smoked paprika and dried marjoram. Sculpted tannins define the long, slightly chewy finish.

92 Points - Vinous
The 2021 Reserva Muga, from Rioja Alta, is a blend of Tempranillo, Garnacha Tinta, Mazuelo and Graciano. This aged for 24 months in barrels. The complex, balanced nose offers sour cherry, black cherry, balsamic notes and undergrowth with the oak providing an unobtrusive frame. Dry, with fine, slightly chalky tannins and a juicy core, the long finish is fruit-forward with delicate nuances from the aging process. 

Product size: 750ml