José Carlos Ríos Muñoz
Professional Beginning Year
2009
Description of their own wines
Our wines, in general, are wines where the fundamental characteristic is that they are easy to drink and extremely rounded. With the perfect ripeness of our main varieties, cariñenas and garnachas, we achieve very smooth tannins. These are wines where ripe fruits dominate on the nose, and they represent the work and daily efforts of our winegrowers. From young single-varietal wines of cariñena or garnacha to fresher and spicier wines made from exotic blends of cariñenas with the foreign syrah, to mature and very long-lived wines with the classic blend of the Priorat region of cariñena with garnacha, and our flagship wine, a single-varietal cariñena aged in foudre, named after the village Masroig.
Being a predominantly red wine region, we cannot fail to mention our whites, which we produce with the star variety, garnacha blanca. These give us wines with white fruit notes, and those made from old vineyards and aged in barrels with maturation evolve very positively over time. We have the responsibility of bottling a winemaking tradition from a region that has been producing wines since the 12th century.
Professional career
"Beginnings in the world of viticulture after harvesting for three seasons in Valdepeñas, that’s where I developed a taste for this world. Later, before finishing enology, I started working in the technical department of a prestigious sherry winery, Williams & Humberts, covering all aspects of Sherry and working extensively with spirits. After completing the sherry stage, my first contact with Catalan viticulture was in Terra Alta at the Gandesa cooperative for one season, 2014, which was quite challenging in terms of weather. The next step was coming to Masroig, starting from the bottom at this winery and gradually, after 5 years, reaching the technical management and taking on the enological responsibility for all the wines produced at Celler Masroig. It’s an honor to hold the position previously occupied by great enologists like Ricard Rofes and Carles Escolar," says Jose Carlos Ríos.
Training
Agricultural Technical Engineer from the University of Seville and Graduate in Oenology from the University of Cádiz