Krug in the rain

Well, it's raining in Paris, and chilly, so what better way of cheering myself up after a sunny trip to Rome this week than heading over to Augé for a little tasting of a couple of Krugs.

Standing under the awning by a barrel - I love Augé's everyman attitude: even Krug just gets a barrel out front! - getting the backs of my legs splashed by the rain, I tasted two different cuvées of Krug, in the sole presence of one other taster - an eighty year old man with a band-aid on his nose. Serving us was a Krug representative, a young and engaging guy. Then one of the Augé fellows came out and we all had a chance to banter.

MV Krug Grande Cuvée - This is my second time with this wine. The other time was a much older bottle - it was at François Audouze's vins anciens dinner, so the bottle was from the mid-1980s. But I digress. I hate to think of myself as "less open" to certain types of wines than others, but for champagne, I am just unavoidably a blanc de blancs fan. So this one came across as pungent, a little bitter, full-bodied, with the kind of push-and-pull between a nutty depth and an easygoing shortbread taste. Seamless, completely invisible dosage. A nice wine, obviously well-bred, but more like Dante's Purgatorio as compared to the Paradiso of blanc de blancs...

1995 Krug - The nose! It smells like... cake batter. But in a good way. Like cake batter with peeled, sliced pears thrown into it. In the mouth, it was sprightly, quick, then bloomed out into a kind of flashy white flower that evolved nicely with green apples and rocks and some dough, and ended with a little tight acidity. Not a "pleasurable" wine, but certainly something to keep an eye on.

Afterward, I ducked inside. When the Augé guy came in, we reconnoitered. Laughing, we talked. I think we were on the same page, as it were. We nodded seriously and discussed. Sure, Krug is legendary, but what we wouldn't give for a glass of Selosse....