TN: NV Krug Champagne Brut Grande Cuvée (France, Champagne)

  • NV Krug Champagne Brut Grande Cuvée - France, Champagne (7/26/2015)
    This bottle is in a really fine spot for my palate. Perfect balance between the lemon/grapefruit acidic elements and the apple/caramel/bread non-acidic elements. Wonderful texture and flavor. A beautiful realization of Krug’s MV after about 8 years in my cellar. After aging a few of these myself over the years, I’m finding it hard to believe you can get a better champagne than bottle aged Krug MV.

Cork code was V651, meaning it was disgorged in late 2006 (it’s been in my off-site storage since purchase in 11/2007).

Posted from CellarTracker

Aged Grande Cuvee is fantastic. Well-kept bottles of the old red label have been among the best non tete-de-cuvee Champagnes I’ve had.

Adrian,

Those red label bottles can be awesome. Also, a friend once bought some white label MV on auction and popped one at a party – very very very fantastic. Another data point that has convinced me to buy more Krug MV to age rather than more of the vintage Krug (which I still have a soft spot for).

How hard is it to find the red labeled NV Krug and when were they disgorged?

This is timely- last week I opened a bottle I have had in the cellar for around 10 years. Was fantastic!

Was a gold label with lots of red in it. The cork has A231 on it- not sure how you determine the disgorgement date.

Jay,

I believe that the “red label” Krug MVs were used from mid 1990s through about 2004 or so. The “red label” looks like this:

I’m not sure if the cork code works on those, but it was explained to me as follows:

First number is the last digit in the year of disgorgement and second number identifies the month, with the translation as follows:

1 - January/February
2 - March/April
3 - May/June
4 - July/August
5 - September/October
6 - November/December.

Accordingly, assuming this code applies to the “red label” bottles as well, your bottle was disgorged sometime between April and July of 2002.

Also, if memory serves, Krug’s MV starts with each vintage as the base wine, and then blends other reserve wines into it to achieve the Krug style. As I remember, Krug then ages the wine for 6 years prior to release. Assuming I remember that correctly, and that your bottle was disgorged in 2002, that would mean that the base wine for that bottle was 1996. No wonder it was terrific!

Greg- thanks!! It was really a wonderful bottle of wine.

The red labels don’t have the cork code right?

The Gold and Red labels do have the cork code for most releases from around 2000 onward. It coincides with LVMH acquiring Krug in 1999.

Assuming its veracity, I like this article titled “How to identify the age of a Krug Grande Cuvée.”