A big thank you to the Krug folks and a local retailer here who put on a very nice tasting this past week. Some impressions below:
Current GC 2011 base. Impressively good for a wine anchored by a challenging year. Well done.
06 very ripe. Very open. Certainly the most accessible young Krug I’ve ever tasted. I know 06 was a ripe vintage but this wine brought out that quality even more than some other champagnes. Overall I thought it was good. But it is perhaps a bit atypical.
06 base GC to compare. This was not good, and it’s troubling to think it may be a signpost for how the 06 vintage will age. This is the first time I’d tasted this wine, so perhaps it was a bottle issue. If others have had this wine recently please chime in. This was surprisingly poor.
02 CdA. This stole the show. Absolutely stunning. I’m not a big buyer of CdM and CdA. Just too expensive for me with so much other good champagne for so much less. But this was epic. I couldn’t hate.
96 vintage mag. I’m not a fan of this wine generally–i find it unbalanced. But this was pretty good. It felt more harmonious than 75ps I’ve had, which I did not expect.
A bit of a tough night otherwise with some dead or corked bottles like 82 and 79 which was disappointing. but good fun nonetheless.
Patrick,
Wow, what a great tasting. I haven’t had the ‘06 nor the eme 162, which I believe is the ‘06 base MV. However, if the ‘06 was showing well, I’d have to assume the 162 eme is just in a bad place or was a bad bottle. The MV have the advantages of consistent expert blending, and multiple vintages to balance it out. As you mentioned, they can make a great MV out of the challenging 2011 base; ‘06 should have been a slam dunk!
Cheers
Warren
I mean, it’s just a tough thing to gauge bc of the reserve wines. The 167 has the benefit of reserve wines from 96, 02, 06, 08, and 09 in addition to ‘11.
Fred. Can’t argue with you on the 88’s. Had my first of the newly released 88 Collection this week and it was superb. My personal favorite Krug vintage by far.
The 96 is interesting though. In the years after its release, we had numerous (really, very numerous) comprehensive horizontal tastings of 1996 champagnes. All the usual and great suspects. And the Krug almost always was towards the top (like top three). But in the last few years (say from 2015 on), for me bottles have been very variable. Provenance of my bottles and those of my friends is very reliable. I’m not sure if there was/is a dumb phase. I’ve also had others say they’ve found bottles perplexing over the past few years. So I can easily understand Patrick’s comment.
Patrick, any comments from Team Krug on 2008? Some are saying there will be no vintage?
Brad, thanks for reminding me on that. I did ask the Krug people about that and the person I was talking to said they honestly aren’t sure. I believe it’s still up in the air.
There was also some talk about not doing a 12, which I was confused by. Anyone have any info on that ? I dont understand why they wouldn’t make 12 vintage–i thought its expected to be a generally good year.
Interesting report, sounds like an excellent event. On this question - I’ve had the 2006 base MV multiple times, including just a few weeks ago. The most recent bottle (a 750) was excellent. Very Krug, showing the richness and complexity I expect, perhaps a tad more development than my previous bottle, but again, as expected. Adored by a few other folks with experienced palates. So perhaps yours was an off bottle? If you’re truly concerned, let me know, I’ll take your bottles off your hands .
There is no 2012 straight vintage Krug. The statement from Krug on this is that they didn’t feel they had enough high quality grapes to support both the Grande Cuvee needs and the volume they wanted to make a vintage wine at. The still wines from 2012 were very, very good and I don’t agree with this decision from my viewpoint, but they obviously have a good reason. In general, I view 2012 as a spectacular year especially for Pinot grapes. Chardonnay was more variable and there were a lot of quantity issues in the Cote de Blancs. Overall, the quantity was down in 2012 and depending on where you grow/source, there could be quanity and quality issues.
Krug has remained mum on whether or not there will be any special/single vineyard wines released from 2012.
1996 has always been a vintage to be careful with when it comes to Pinot wines. Many grapes were not harvested with proper phenolic ripeness and rather by numbers on a sheet of paper. This has resulted in a lot of wines maturing quite rapidly, but maintaining a very acidic backbone. The wines are not maturing evenly either as one bottle of a wine may show well and the next sort of tired. The 1990 vintage has similar, but not quite the same problem with wines maturing much more quickly and not as uniform as expected. 2002 also has some issues with early maturing/peaking for the Chardonnay wines as some folks harvested a bit too ripe/mature.
While it’s commendable that Krug places great importance on the mv, from a business perspective it seems questionable not to produce vintage wines from 2008 and 2012. Maybe they will follow Salon’s lead with limited releases en magnum.
We had the 2002 Mesnils and Clos de L’Ambonnay 2002 last week . The first one was a finesse wine , young , mineral , chalky , stunningly good . The second one more creamy , powerful , very long and sweeter . A style preference . But both are some of the best Champagnes I ever had . The 1996’s are better imho but who knows 5 years from now .
Wasn’t at this event, but for similar ones that I’ve been to, a few collectors/attendees bring a bottle or two from their cellars. I’m assuming that’s what happened here.
went to the krug house here in nyc for the final event on saturday and have a very different take on the 2006 base GC, edition 162 which i really enjoyed. the 2006 vintage wine i liked a lot, but i find i generally prefer GC to vintage - likely because it’s just showing more at the same age. they also poured 167 which i think may have been my favorite. went back for more/a lot of each and was pleased by the consistency. 2004 also was excellent but closed for me. i think Krug GC out of magnum is perhaps the greatest deal in champagne.
Verboten for 10-12?? or so years for jero’s.
Secondary fermentation has to be in bottle for 3L or smaller, unless regulations have recently changed which I’m not aware of.
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