Krug Grande Cuvée

Grande Cuvée is not a vintage wine and is not trying to be. Each release is a fresh recreation blended to a consistent house style, and Krug numbers them rather than dating them — the 172ème Édition, for instance, drew on 146 separate wines from eleven different years, the youngest 2016 and the oldest 1998, at roughly 44% pinot noir, 36% chardonnay and 20% meunier. Every one of those wines is fermented in small oak casks first, which is unusual at this scale and much of why Krug tastes the way it does.

After blending it rests around seven years more in the cellars before release, and it shows: dense and layered rather than simply crisp, with dried fruit, hazelnut, honey and brioche, a fine insistent bead and real length. Serve it cool but not ice cold, in a white wine glass. It stands up to rich food far better than most champagne — Krug themselves point people towards Indian cooking, and the spice genuinely works against that depth.