Has it been released? If not, any idea when it will be? How can it be identified? Thanks.
It was released quite a while ago - over 5 years ago as the current Grande Cuvee is based on 2007. They are doing a re-release of the 2002 Grande Cuvee to correspond with the 2002 vintage release. This late release wine is now named the 158th edition as it is the 158th blend of a unique/different Grande Cuvee blend. Additionally, they previously did a limited late release of the 2002 based Grande Cuvee under the Equilbre name (rather than 158th edition).
If you are looking to identify original bottles, you will need the cork code and will want to look for mid-2008 to early 2009 disgorgements.
Please explain what you mean by “based on”. I ask because WRT the MV, Krug will state what the oldest and youngest vintages are used for the assembled wine. They do not refer to a “base”.
Are you referring to the year representing the largest portion or the youngest portion of the cuvée? If so, I would imagine this would represent far less than 10% of a blend.
Thanks.
Mark,
The “base” vintage of a Champagne refers to the youngest vintage in the blend as this is usually/almost always the majority of the NV blend and in rare cases where it is not the majority it still the greatest proportion of the blend. I will admit that there are a few NV wines out there where the youngest wine in the blend is not the leading proportion, but even in these cases, the base vintage refers to the youngest vintage in the blend.
Regardless of whether people agree with the definition of base vintage, what is most important is that the base vintage allows you to tell when a blend changes and is a reference to this. In a way it is the “vintage” element of the NV because it allows you to identify the wine which is important because NVs do change from year to year.
Maybe a better way to describe why the base year is almost always referred to as the youngest wine in the blend is because it is the starting point or base to which reserve wines are added. The final blend is essentially “based” on the characteristics of the most recent harvest.
Also to more directly answer what a typical NV will have in terms of the base year being a percentage of the blend 50-75% is a rather usual range.
Brad-
Thanks for the insight. I guess I falsely assumed that the MV, being composed of almost 15 different vintages, would not be so predominantly made up of a single year. The information is appreciated!
There are of course some NV wines made up of single vintages too.
Russell makes a a good point. There are also NVs that are a pure vintage wine. These are usually from smaller producers and result from:
- the wine not being aged long enough to gain official vintage status
- the winemaker wanting flexibility on age of the wine and vintages in the blend so that things can vary from year to year; not wanting to have to constantly change and register the front label to reflect all of this makes labeling the wine as an NV an attractive option especially when you can add details to the back label that explain what is in the bottle.