Krug X Rice for Valentine's Day with K&L Wine Merchant's Champagne Buyer Gary Westby

On Monday, for Valentine’s Day, Cinnamon and I opened the best bottle of wine I have drunk in quite a while. It was the Krug Grande Cuvée 165ème edition, which had been in my cellar for just over four years. Just last week, Krug announced their ingredient of the year—rice—as part of their wonderful single-ingredient program. Each year they choose a “humble” ingredient to inspire everyone from top chefs to Krug-loving home cooks to come up with great pairings. Cinnamon and I had been talking about which rice dish to cook ever since. I settled on crab risotto, a dish we used to make every Dungeness crab season, but due to poor supply of the crustaceans over the last few years, have not made in quite a while.

For the risotto, I made a double stock, adding the exoskeleton from the freshly picked crab to the stock pot with a little bit of extra celery. After that cooked for about an hour, I strained it and made my risotto as usual, finishing it with about 2/3 of a cup of freshly whipped, plain cream instead of butter. I packed the best pieces of leg meat into the bottom of two ramekins, filled the rest with risotto and then inverted them onto plates, finishing them with quick pickled pink peppercorns (pepper was a previous year’s Krug ingredient) and a little parsley. The dish, and the pairing, were a success.

The Krug 165 is absolutely singing right now and proves once again how much Grande Cuvée improves with a little cellaring. I know, it is hard not to drink it on release—it is delicious out of the gate—but if you can bury a bottle in the cellar, the reward is incredible. For me, I must physically bury Grande Cuvée in order to save it. I put the bottles in a box, not marked Krug, and then put a ton of other wine on top of it in my cellar. Yes, I have to hide it from myself in order to not be tempted to drink it… it is worth it.

My bottle was KRUG ID# 416036, composed of 47% Pinot Noir, 38% Chardonnay, and 15% Meunier. That Chardonnay character really shines through, and reminded me a lot of the 2019 Carillon Puligny-Montrachet “Les Enseignieres” that I drank last month on the unbelievably fresh, long, and limey finish. The wine was disgorged in Fall of 2016, so it has now had six years on the cork; yet the white gold color still had a little flash of green in it. This will go a long, long time more in good storage conditions—decades, I would say. The wine is a blend of 14 vintages spanning 1990 to 2009 and has the complexity that one would expect from such variety and maturity. The ripe 2009, which makes up most of the cépage, has been deftly blended to emphasize freshness while letting the maturity express itself as authoritative concentration and shape-shifting complexity. I found hazelnut Pinot power, fresh brioche richness, and layers of subtle sweet spice in this wine, all snapping back to that aromatic lime freshness on the back. I won’t ever forget it. This jolt of mineral-laden citric energy on the back end played perfectly with the decadent crab and creamy risotto. The pink peppercorns brought out the spice in the wine. It was a great night.

When you can, bury a bottle of Krug’s Grande Cuvée in your cellar. You will not regret it!

A toast to you!

- Gary Westby, K&L Champagne Buyer