It’s the most prestigious name in Champagne. The house of Krug was founded in Reims in 1843, and from the beginning made itself distinctive by fermenting base wines in small oak barrels, and using very extended lees contact. Krug has always stood out for a character that is oak-driven and autolytic. Recent years, though, have seen some very elegant reinterpretations of that style. The NV Grande Cuvee always includes a wide spread of up to ten years’ worth of declarable vintages, and is released in numbered editions with a determined history. Vintage Krug is only made in the best years. Krug have always gone to extraordinary lengths to source the very best grapes and, unusually, they hold Pinot Meunier in high regard. While many houses look down on Meunier and exclude it from their premium and vintage bottlings, Krug celebrates the variety as a source of fruit and mid-palate generosity, and use it in broadly equal proportions to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.

For generations, the Krug family maintained that their metier was that of perfectionist winemakers and blenders rather than vineyard owners. That changed in 1971, when they acquired the Clos du Mesnil vineyard in the Chardonnay grand cru village of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger. After a thorough replanting programme, the first vintage of Clos du Mesnil (1979) appeared in 1986 to great acclaim. The family went on to acquire the tiny, walled garden vineyard of Clos d’Ambonnay in the mid-1990s. They had prized Ambonnay above all other villages for Pinot Noir for over 100 years, and their Clos d’Ambonnay is a powerful expression of pure Pinot Noir Champagne. And Krug Rose is a very different beast from the house’s other releases. It’s not about autolytic complexity from long aging, but is delicate and pure. (NT 27/09/24)