Krug
Vintage Brut
Champagne
1990

The producer

In the constellation of stars of Champagne, Krug must be the brightest. Certainly, the most expensive as Krug often starts where the others peak and is today the only Champagne house to make only prestige champagnes every year since its foundation in 1843. The single vineyard wines are up there among the finest from Bordeaux and Burgundy in both quality and price.

Much is made of the mystery of the Krug quality and consistency. They only own 35% of the vineyards that produce the wines but have very close relationship with their 100-odd growers. They effect 250 separate fermentations each vintage, initially in seasoned oak (but they downplay any unique influence therefrom), building a unique collection of over 150 reserve wines whence the blend for Grand Cuvee wines are produced.

The range extends from Grand Cuvee, Rose, and Vintage to the individual vineyard wines from arguably the best villages for Chardonnay with its Clos de Mesnil, and Pinot Noir with Clos d’Ambonnay. Rigorous selection, fastidious winemaking, and a touch of genius in blending make Krug the undisputed king of Champagnes.

The wine

Vintage Krug is a small percentage of the total production of the house and decision on which to produce is more on the character of the potential rather than the overall quality of the year. The blend for each Vintage Cuvee will also vary to express the season rather than any definitive style. Krug also bucks the normal prestige cuvee norm of using little or no Pinot Meunier and most vintage wines contain a decent slug albeit from some of the finest sources.

These are wines with extraordinary longevity. There was a period when Krug released a range of Vintage Collection wines with wines decades old tasting with the blinding vivacity of the current releases.

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a guide to our customers, who will (and should) do their own research. We will add individual critic scores to our website in the future.