Muga

The winery started with a courtship. An ancestor of Isaac Muga was a foreman at La Rioja Alta, and that is where Isaac met Aurora Caño. In 1932 the two of them founded their own house in underground cellars on the main street of Haro.

In 1971 they moved to the Barrio de la Estación, into a two-hundred-year-old mansion. Three generations of the family have run it since.

They have a cooperage inside the winery, with a master cooper and three coopers on the payroll: that is where all their barrels are made, and also the wooden vats they ferment in.

The grapes for Prado Enea are always the last to reach the winery. They come from the north-west of the Rioja Alta — Sajazarra, Cellorigo and Fonzaleche — between 550 and 600 metres, on clay-limestone soil, and they are tempranillo, garnacha, mazuelo and graciano.

It ferments in oak vats, with no temperature control and no added yeast, with sixteen days of maceration. It ages a minimum of thirty-six months in French and American oak barrels, is fined with fresh egg whites and then waits at least another thirty-six months in bottle before release.