1. When it comes to the table it is like the arrival of a very beautiful woman who is a little late, but not too late. Her flushed state, flustered mildly at being the center of attention, only heightens your anticipation of her company.
Many bottles of Champagne are beautiful, elegant, even sensuous, but there is something about the shape of a bottle of Krug that is slightly more erotic than all the rest. It might be the elongated neck; it might be the way the shoulder joins the neck at an exhilarating soft dip, a little lower than most. It is a neck you want to touch with the back of your fingers.
2. It must be cold, so cold you can feel it, like a fog, on your fingers just before you grasp it.
3. If you don’t know how to open a bottle of Champagne, do not open the Krug ’89. Leave it for a professional. Unfortunately you won’t have the pleasure of grasping the neck of that bottle or holding its cork in the crook of your thumb. You won’t get the chance to turn the bottle, as you grasp the punt, easing the cork from its sheath, leaving it to swell in your hand as you hear the tiny gasp the bottle produces as it releases its first breath. You’ll miss that first sharp, almost acrid wisp of yeast as it escapes, having been trapped for many long years and not yet possessing the expansive aromas that oxygen will soon bestow upon the wine’s perfume.
For God’s sake, do not let the wine bubble over. Do not spill a drop.
You may wish to practice on a few other bottles of lesser Champagne before you pick up the Krug ’89.
4. It is probably not an elegant thing to do with a Krug 89, but if you can, put your ear to the flute and imagine the music this wine is producing. All bubbles make noise, but none make a noise like Champagne: beer tends to muffle itself, choked on its own foam, and the sound of a soft drink is much too coarse for the sound to be anything but jarring.
The Krug ’89 does not possess that sort of aggression. It may appear to be a little reticent even, as if the excitement of having opened and poured the wine has quickly died into something much more sedate and contemplative. But it just means that you have to pay much closer attention. It is telling you to lean in. And so you must.
5. In seconds, after you pour the glass, the bubbles have settled into a pretty, soft mousse in the center of the surface of the wine, a tiny slope of air and aroma. The word for this thing is perlage, a beautiful word that means roughly how the bubbles look and feel, but there is something about the sound of the word itself suggests that this is a word that can only be used with sparkling wine, that it is a word that was invented for the inimitable experience of drinking Champagne. In fact the sound of the word itself serves as an analog for the sensation, and the sensuality of the bubbles as they strike your mouth. That’s “perlage,” as in “pearl,” perlage as in “ah”, as in that beautiful “zh” sound of the French “g.”
And the music itself? The perlage of the Krug ’89 sounds like a sonata played in another room, with the window open, on a summer’s day, with the sound the sea retreating softly into low tide. It is not a crashing but a distant, rippling hum. If you try to hear it, you cannot.
6. It is not quite bronze, the color, but that is the word you want to use. Gold is crass. Bronze has depth. The color has the depth of bronze without being the color bronze.
7. Breathe it. You cannot exactly smell the Krug ’89. Do so with your mouth slightly open so your mouth can smell it too.
Like most great wine if you try and isolate the smell you’ll be disappointed, if you try and describe it you will lose the sensation of smelling it.
But words will gather anyway and you may say them to yourself. Caramel, warm bread, tarte tatin, a perfectly ripe apple. Let the words come and go. Do not attach to them. As the wine takes on air they will obsolesce anyway. Be Zen about your Krug ’89.
8. Before you take a sip of the Krug ’89, ask yourself if you’re ready to take a sip of the Krug ’89. Try, if you can, to accept the fact that no Champagne will ever taste quite like it, that you will in fact be ruined by this experience.
This might be the most vivid way to describe the flavors of the Krug ’89. Recently I was at a Grandes Marques Champagne event, and there was a room full of extraordinary wines, including Möet’s Grand Cru, Billecart-Salmon Rose, the exquisite Charles Heidsieck ’95 Blanc de Blancs, a Grande Dame here, a Salon there. All in their way were extraordinary. Lastly I tried the Krug ’89, and while I had not been disappointed with any of the wines I’d had to that point, when I put the Krug ’89 to my lips I immediately thought, why did I bother with all of those other wines?
9. For all that is packed into the Krug ’89, it is not a demonstrative wine. It’s as if, when the first drops strike your mouth, it is just waking up. Then it seems to snap to a kind of attention, or gather some composure. That is the structure and that strange process from chaos to clarity or completeness, is one of the remarkable things about the Krug ’89, it is perhaps one of the reasons that people think of wine as a living thing.
In fact it is your mouth that is doing most of this composition (and your brain); the Krug ’89 is simply possessed of exquisite parts.
You will again be tempted to describe the flavors in your mouth, but if you can’t find them, no matter. When I taste the Krug ’89 I think of the seaside, but it only vaguely tastes of the sea. Perhaps I think of the sea because of the expanse of the sky, the slightly overwhelmed feeling you get when you can see all the way to the horizon, and can make out the very curve of the earth.
10. But the flavors: the Krug ’89 bears an exceptional freshness in the mouth – again that perfectly ripe apple – while it carries just a hint of nutty, oxidative richness. It’s texture is incomparable – it is rich, but that richness is shot through with such penetrating acidity that that richness never feels heavy or indulgent, like a thunderhead illuminated by the afternoon sun; there’s weight, and incredible mass, but it’s floating.
The finish actually does possess a hint of the sea and even perhaps a sensation of limestone minerality, the lees give off brioche flavors and the apple, too, remains. The texture is a thing to wrap yourself in.
And then it’s all over until the next sip.