Wine & Spirits - Winter 2019 - 53

O LD WO RLD

Top 100 Wineries

Krug

Robert Moncuit

FRANCE | CHAMPAGNE
A collection of legendary blends and rare single-variety, singlevineyard Grand Cru wines from Champagne.

FRANCE | CHAMPAGNE
Pierre Amillet's experimentations combine with a rich family
history of winemaking in Robert Moncuit's sophisticated and
distinctively terroir-expressive wines.

JOSEPH KRUG LEFT A CAREER in the Champagne
business to make his own wine. He founded his
firm in 1843 with the intention of releasing only
two wines: a blend, using reserve stocks to create consistency with each new harvest and, when
the vintage warranted, a wine of a single year.
His policy remained in place until the 1970s,
when brothers Henri and Rémi Krug started
adding to the portfolio, including a rosé and two
rare monopole bottlings, Clos de Mesnil and,
most recently, Clos du Ambonnay. Still, Grande
Cuvée remains central to Krug, the ambitions of
the blend harking back to the founding of the
house, the wine now based on more than 100
lots and older reserves aged in small stainlesssteel vats. Recently, CEO Maggie Henriquez
began to publish the background on each disgorgement online, tied to a code on the bottle.
The information includes the base vintage, the
number of lots and the oldest reserve in the
blend. Together with chef de cave Eric Lebel's
notes on the release, the information allows
krugistes to consider how Lebel and the blending team, including Olivier Krug, shepherd the
character of the base vintage into the symphonic
complexity of Grande Cuvée. -J.G.

ERIC
LEBEL

THE HISTORY OF THIS ESTATE begins in 1889 when
Alex Moncuit acquired vineyards in Les Mesnilsur-Oger in the Côte des Blancs. His grandson,
Robert, crafted the first cuvée in 1928. Robert's
daughter, Françoise, took over the estate in
1987, and since 2000, her son, Pierre Amillet,
has made the wines. He now oversees 19 acres of
vines, all chardonnay, all organically farmed and
harvested by hand. In the process, he's created a
portfolio of wines based on ripe chardonnay bottled with little to no dosage, so as not to obscure
the terroir differences. To that end, he also
began bottling by parcel, introducing Les Chétillons, from a chalky, southeast-facing site in Le
Mesnil-sur-Oger, in 2008. In 2010, he added to
the lineup a wine from Les Vozémieux, a parcel
a third of a mile away. That wine, released only
this year, is one of the most impressive Champagnes we tasted in the last 12 months, and a fitting apex to a portfolio defined by radiance and
precision. -R.D.T.

PIERRE
AMILLET

2010 Champagne Grand Cru Le Mesnil-sur-Oger
Vozémieux Extra Brut Blanc de Blancs ($113, 97
points) This is the first vintage of this cuvée, from a
1.6-acre plot of 66-year-old vines in Oger. It's made in
the same way as Les Chétillons-fermented in barrel,
allowed to go through malolactic fermentation and
bottled with very little dosage. Disgorged in March
2017, it's the epitome of chardonnay Champagne:
silky and salty, with layers of herb, pear and yellowfruit flavors that last, weightlessly, for minutes.

Champagne Grande Cuvée 165th Edition Brut
($170, 94 points) Krug's 165th Edition is based on
the 2009 vintage, from individual parcels fermented
in neutral oak vats, the final blend including 127
wines from 12 vintages, back to 1990. A powerful,
vinous Champagne, it follows a supple line of flavor
focused on notes of lemon peel, salty pear and yellow
flowers. Almost tannic in its youthful structure, it's a
Champagne suited to aging.

FOUNDED:

1843

OWNER:

LVMH
CHEF DE CAVE:

2004 Champagne Brut Blanc de Blancs Clos du
Mesnil ($1,000, 96 points) An elegant turn for Clos
du Mesnil, this takes the massive, masculine power
the vineyard can deliver and contrasts it with delicate
scents of narcissus, hibiscus and something wild, like
rooibos tea. Its subtle intensity thrives within the substantial chalk structure this terroir can give.

Eric Lebel
ACRES OWNED:

FOUNDED:

1889

OWNER/
WINEMAKER/
VITICULTURIST:

Pierre Amillet
N/A

CASES PRODUCED:

N/A
ESTATE GROWN:

N/A
IMPORTER:

Moët Hennessy
USA, NY

2002 Champagne Brut Blanc de Noirs Clos
d'Ambonnay ($2,000, 96 points) Clos d'Ambonnay
is adjacent to Krug's press house, so the pinot noir
grapes didn't have far to go before they were transformed into this brooding pinot noir, stony in its massive structure, swirling with youthful power. A great
Ambonnay vintage, this is one of our Top 100 Wines
of the Year.

ACRES OWNED:

CASES PRODUCED:

6,600
ESTATE GROWN:

100%
IMPORTER:

Grand Cru
Selections, NY

2012 Champagne Grand Cru Le Mesnil-sur-Oger
Brut Blanc de Blancs ($90, 93 points) A blend of
fruit from some of the estate's oldest vines (excluding
those in Les Chétillons), and disgorged in May 2017,
this is youthful and tense, with yellow-peach flavor
countering its chalky austerity. Powerfully structured,
this is built to age.
Champagne Grand Cru Le Mesnil-sur-Oger Brut
Blanc de Blancs ($51, 91 points) Amillet ferments
80 percent of every vintage in neutral barrels, the
balance in stainless-steel tanks. For his nonvintage
wine, he blends in 20 percent that he's reserved from
the previous vintage, and bottles it with five grams
per liter of dosage. The result is a wine that's both
tight and fresh, nutty and fleshy, with clarity to its
mineral flavors.
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