Cellar Master Éric Lebel looks back on 21 years at the House of Krug and its singular founding philosophy :
Twenty-one years have passed since I began my journey as Cellar Master at the House of Krug. For over two decades, I have been walking through the Champagne vines, observing the unique character of the vineyard plots and the wines born from each of them. It was founder Joseph Krug’s unfaltering belief that only by paying the utmost attention to every single element could he offer the fullest expression of Champagne with the highest possible quality every year, regardless of variations in climate.
In order to transcend the notion of vintage in creating a Champagne with exceptional quality, Joseph Krug began building a collection of reserve wines to which six generations have contributed. This library now houses 150 wines, each expressing the personality of an individual plot. Every year, to craft an Édition of Krug Grande Cuvée or Krug Rosé, the tasting committee and I audition around 250 wines of the year’s harvest and 150 reserve wines from 14 different years, and record over 4 000 tasting notes. Each Édition is created anew and bottles will then rest for several years in our cellars before being presented. Their stories are revealed online via the Krug iD on the back label of every bottle.