1996 Clos du Mesnil
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2019 - 2039
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This wine was tasted informally at the Rusty Staub Charity Dinner, held in April 2015 at the Bouley Test Kitchen in New York City.
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2014 - 2036
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This wine was part of a retrospective tasting 1996 Champagne – For The Ages.
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This complete vertical of Krug's Clos du Mesnil was one of the most amazing tastings I have ever attended. The event was organized by my New York tasting group and was important enough to attract Olivier Krug, who added his invaluable commentary to the wines. I am not sure Krug himself had ever tasted so many vintages side by side in one setting. The wines were tasted in thematic flights rather than in strict chronological order, which is how I have listed them here. The 1979, 1988 and 1996 form the triumvirate of the truly eternal, epic Clos du Mesnils, but there were many, many fabulous wines in this tasting. We finished with a look at the estate's other 1996s, plus the 1995 Clos d'Ambonnay, a wine that continues to grow in bottle.
Few estates in Champagne are more closely identified with the art of blending than Krug. It is not unusual for Krug to serve their multi-vintage Grande Cuvée – the winery's largest production and least expensive wine – after all of the heavy weights in their lineup. Krug's Vintage Champagne is also built on the concept of blending. I have seen the house's records of purchased grapes going back to the 1940s, and it is amazing to observe, even then, the number of villages from which Krug sourced fruit. For those reasons, it was quite a surprise when Krug released their first single-vineyard Champagne, the 1979 Clos du Mesnil, in 1986. The project had been so secret and closely held that only a few insiders knew of the existence of the wine prior to its commercial release. Since then, Clos du Mesnil has rightly established itself as one of the world's most iconic wines.
The Krug family purchased Clos du Mesnil in 1971. Krug had sourced fruit from other vineyards in Mesnil for years, but had never even known of the existence of the Clos until the property was put up for sale, which is hard to imagine in today's world of satellite imaging and technology. The early vintages from Clos du Mesnil were used for the Grande Cuvée. Like all wines at Krug, the parcels from Clos du Mesnil were vinified and aged separately. Over the course of the years, Krug noticed that the wines from the Clos were unique, and in 1979 bottled a trial version of Clos du Mesnil as an experiment. It was the first single-vineyard wine Krug had ever produced. The wine was released in 1986 and the rest, as they say, is history. Since then Clos du Mesnil has become the crown jewel in the estate's lineup. It may get some competition from the more recently introduced Clos d'Ambonnay, which is the Pinot Noir version of Clos du Mesnil.
Clos du Mesnil measures 1.84 hectares and is farmed and vinified in five or six separate parcels, some of which may be excluded from the final assemblage. Part of what makes the Clos unique is the walls themselves, which act to preserve heat and protect the vineyard from the elements, never a bad thing in a cold region like Champagne. Clos du Mesnil is maintained as a separate winemaking facility that handles all of the wines made in the Clos, plus other wines from the village of Mesnil that are vinified by Krug. Oenologist Julie Cavil oversees the small-scaled, artisan level production at the winery.
Krug only releases Clos du Mesnil in extraordinary years. Recently the estate made the decision not to release the 1999 after it had been fully aged and disgorged. The labels were printed, and the wine was ready to go, but at the last minute Krug decided the vintage was not worthy of their rightly lofty standard of quality. Based on the bottle I tasted a few months ago, I have to agree. The next Clos du Mesnil is the 2000, which is scheduled to be released in November 2011.
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Over the last few months I have had the chance to revisit a number of Champagnes from the celebrated 1996 vintage. My first retrospective on the 1996s, published last year, found many of the wines in great shape. Today, only a year later, a number of bottles are finally beginning to show hints of their ultimate potential. Many of these wines have been on the market for some time but only now, fourteen years after the harvest, is it possible to taste a complete range of the tête-de-cuvées from all of the major houses.
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This wine was tasted during collector Bruce Fingeret's birthday party, July 2010
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My tasting this year with Olivier Krug was fascinating as I had the rare opportunity to taste all of the house's 1996's side by side, a comparison that yielded very interesting results.
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This magical evening continued into a delicious dinner blessed with a stunning array of wines. The menu, prepared by Grissini Restaurant and served al fresco, was simple, tasty and very nicely done, as always.
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1996 remains one of the great modern-day vintages for Champagne. The wines possess a combination of bright acidity and high sugars that is extremely rare. The best 1996 Champagnes are bold, racy and exuberant, in both absolute and relative terms, something that has also come across in numerous recent tastings, including verticals of Dom Pérignon, Cristal, Krug and Dom Ruinart. For all of these houses 1996 is one of the more powerful, extroverted vintages of the last 15 or so years. To be sure, the vintage also has its critics. Those who are skeptical of the vintage claim that some producers harvested too early and that a number of wines possess excessively austere and lean personalities that will never soften. My experience with the Champagnes below and others, however, has mostly been extremely positive and I am convinced the best wines have enough balance of fruit and acidity to age gracefully, in some cases for decades.
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This wine was tasted as a part of wine collector Bruce Fingeret's 50th Birthday Party, July 2008.
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