Champagne Krug, Grande Cuvée, 172ème Édition, Brut

The 172ème Édition is a blend of 44% Pinot Noir, 36% Chardonnay and 20% Meunier based on 2016 with reserve wines back to 1998. Disgorged: Winter 2022 - 2023. Krug ID: 123003

The NV Grande Cuvée 172ème Édition is a gracious, sublime Champagne. Light citrus notes, white flowers, spice, marzipan and chamomile inflections all run through this delicate, nuanced Grande Cuvée. The 172eme is a Champagne of understatement and class that is very much a reflection of the base year. Brisk acids pull it all together. The Grande Cuvée is often quite accessible on release, but this is an Edition I would cellar for at least another year or two. It’s a fine effort from Krug.

Drink 2024 - 2044

Beautiful notes of dried citrus fruit, lemon curd and dried apples with hints of spices, dried flowers and subtle brioche. I like the polished and caressing texture and steady, refreshing acidity. It’s fresh and even austere, with notes of ground spices. So vertical and firm. Structured and long.

Drink or hold

44% Pinot Noir, 36% Chardonnay, 20% Pinot Meunier. Base wine 2016, 42% reserve wines oldest 1998), 6 years on the lees, disgorged January 2023. Dosage 6 g/l.

Gentle, creamy, pure citrus aroma and ever so subtly toasty. Clementine, jasmine. So many gorgeous layers. Hint of ginger. This is intense and piercing. Not bone dry, and the sweetness shows a little on the finish at the moment even if it is perfectly balanced. More perfumed as it opens in the glass but the autolytic character is gentle. Orange blossom. So much more perfumed than I expected. Slightly sweet-tasting on the finish.

Drink 2024 - 2038

58% of the wine is from the 2016 vintage, which saw a lot of rain in the spring and is close to flowering, with 42% from reserve wines. The blend comprises 146 separately vinified wines from 11 different years; the oldest wine in the blend is from the 1998 vintage.

The 172ème édition, based on the 2016 vintage, is a delicate, floral, and saline Grande Cuvée at this early stage in its life. The palate is taut and tightly wound, gradually unfurling into toasted fruit bread, rye bread, and roasted nuts, wrapped around an intricate and taut lemon core. It's exceptionally long, spicy, rounded, and spherical in shape. Notes of sweet unsalted butter round out the finish with such length, elegance, and balance.

Drink 2024 - 2045

Krug's NV Grande Cuvée 170ème Édition is based on the 2014 vintage, complemented by some 45% reserve wines dating back to 1998, with the house drawing on, among many others, 2013 for structure and 2012 and 2003 for generosity. Opening in the glass with aromas of pastry cream, dried fruits, pear, warm spices, freshly baked bread and vanilla pod, it's medium to full-bodied, pillowy and fine-boned, with excellent concentration, racy acids and a precise, chiseled profile. But if the latter adjective could be applied to the 2013-base 169ème édition equally felicitously, the 2014-base 170ème is more giving and less tightly wound out of the gates and will offer more demonstrative drinking young.

Drink 2021 - 2041

The new Krug release, the NV Grande Cuvée 172ème Édition, based on the 2016 vintage and comprising 11 vintages in total (the oldest is 1998), is outstanding. It reveals a complex, slightly spicy bouquet of white fruits, beeswax, marzipan, hazelnuts, dried herbs, ripe orchard fruits and white flowers. Medium to full-bodied, rich and concentrated on the palate, it has a subtly spicy entry, an enrobing and layered texture and a fleshy core of fruit framed around a perfectly balanced, fresh and mineral finish. Crafted primarily from Pinot Noir (44%) and complemented with 30% Chardonnay and the rest Pinot Meunier, it was disgorged in the first quarter of 2023 with a dosage of 4.5 grams per litre. Keep it for 5-10 years.