Krug: Seven Vintages and Two Clos

Krug declares a Vintage only in the years it chooses to, and each one is the record of a single harvest. It is the inverse of the house’s better-known work: Grande Cuvée exists to build something no single year could give on its own, while a Krug Vintage exists to show what one year gave and nothing else.

Seven of them open the evening — 2013, 2011, 2008, 2006, 2000, and then 1996 and 1995. Eighteen years of harvests in sequence, presented by someone who sits on the committee that decides what each of them becomes.

The last two are Krug Collection. Same wines, same harvests, but held back in the cellars in Reims and disgorged many years after the original release. A Collection bottle and a standard release of the same vintage are not interchangeable, and tasting two of them after five younger Vintages is the clearest way to understand what the extra time in the cellar actually does.

The evening closes with the two walled plots. Clos du Mesnil is 1.8 hectares of Chardonnay enclosed by a wall that has stood inside the village of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger since 1698; Krug first bottled it on its own in 1979. Clos d’Ambonnay is smaller again, under 0.7 hectares of Pinot Noir in Ambonnay, first released in 2007 from the 1995 harvest. Each is the product of one plot in one year, and the two are seldom poured side by side.

Isabelle Bui is Winemaking Development Manager at Krug and a member of the house’s Tasting Committee — the group that tastes every plot every year and decides what becomes a Vintage, what goes into the Édition, and what is set aside. She will present all nine wines.

The nine wines

Krug Vintage 2013
Krug Vintage 2011
Krug Vintage 2008
Krug Vintage 2006
Krug Vintage 2000
Krug Collection 1996
Krug Collection 1995
Krug Clos du Mesnil 2009
Krug Clos d’Ambonnay 2008

Twelve seats, 18 November from 18:00.