Spanish Wines

DOQ Rioja is Spain’s flagship and most famous wine producing region, making classic, Spanish blended wines with a tradition which can place a high emphasis on long aging of wines in oak barrels. This has in part established the classification system Rioja adheres to by denominating their wines by the amount of time they have spent in the barrel.
Today, wine makers in Rioja may use a mix of French and American oak for their barrels and take a more innovative and modern approach to achieve the high quality associated with the region’s wines. These attributes can be found in many great wines from wineries such as Bodegas Palacio, Marques de Murrietta, Rioja Vega and Martinez Bujanda.
One renowned producer of particular interest in Rioja Alta is Bodegas Muga, where traditional and modern wine making techniques can be found side-by-side. A family-run winery producing wines of pronounced personality, Bodegas Muga is unique in that it is one of the only wineries in Spain to have its own cooperage (barrel making facilities) and their own hand crafted barrels are used in the production of all their wines. Decades of family tradition, dedication and skill go into every hand crafted bottle. Bodegas Muga award winning wines receive accolades and high ratings every year, in particular their flagship Aro and Torre Muga. The Reserva 2004 was listed as one of Wine Spectator’s Top 100 wines of 2008.
While Rioja DOQ may be Spain’s flagship region, Ribera del Duero DO is notorious for wines of premium quality that command high prices with equal recognition, where Vega Sicilia has in the past been renowned for Spain’s most expensive wine. A region of red grapes, the vast majority of wine produced is from Tempranillo, although quantities of Grenache, Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec and Merlot can be used in the blend. The famous wine making village of Pesquera del Duero is home to Bodegas Emilio Moro, whose wine making skills and craft produce unblended 100% Tempranillo wines of exceptional quality. The Bodegas vineyard goes back three generations where Emilio Moro started his wine career treading grapes and racking wines at the tender age of fourteen.