The Krug Challenge 2024: Krug x Flowers
Every year, Krug announces an ingredient of the year to inspire the chefs of the world to create dishes to go with their spectacular champagne. Not wanting to be left out, Cinnamon and I make something for the home kitchen as well—it is an excellent excuse to drink Krug on a weeknight. This year, the ingredient is flowers, and luckily for us, nasturtiums grow wild in the Willows neighborhood of Menlo Park where we live. It only took a short walk to forage a little bag of these edible flowers—in June they practically pour out onto the sidewalk!
Cinnamon had the idea to bake a leek tart, a proven winner with Krug, and top it with the nasturtiums that we had picked only an hour or two before serving. The tart was rustic French country cooking, puff pastry with a topping of leeks cooked in butter with pancetta. The flowers not only made this simple dish look pretty but added a wonderfully fresh element to this rich starter. We served the tart on my great grandmother’s China, which is decorated with hand-painted flowers to add a little more visual interest. I hope to have this combination again before the nasturtiums fade in the summer heat!
We paired the tart with the about-to-be-sold out Krug "Grande Cuvée" 171ème Édition Brut Champagne, which was drinking perfectly. Our bottle was Krug ID 122013, which was disgorged in the winter of 2021/2022 and had benefited tremendously, like Grande Cuvée always does, from a good bit of time on the cork. The 171 has 42% reserves from 11 different vintages, going back all the way to 2000, the year that I started at K&L. The youngest wine in the blend is from 2015. It is composed of 45% Pinot Noir, 37% Chardonnay, and 18% Meunier—as always at Krug, 100% barrel fermented. All of this and more can be learned from their best-in-the-business website or app that is available in the Apple App Store, simply by typing in the ID on the back of the bottle. Krug has gone from being the opaquest to the most transparent grande marque producer in the years that I have been doing the Champagne buying at K&L, and I applaud them for sharing all the information with wine lovers like they do.
The Krug 171 was generous, fresh and truly grand. I loved the bright white gold color, and the deep aromatics that had everything from fine brioche to ultra-bright citrus. In the mouth it hid its profound complexity under a silky texture of fine bubbles and a balance that made it super easy to drink. The layers of bready richness, chalky minerality, and limey zip revealed themselves even more with the food, air, and as the temperature of the wine rose. The buttery crust of the tart gave the Champagne something to cut with its vivacious acidity, and the peppery freshness of the nasturtiums brought out the Puligny-Montrachet-like lime in the wine, accentuating its liveliness. The finish of the wine was on the very top level—an expansive peacocks’ tail that showed off the chalk of the top-quality vineyard sites with an echo of brioche.
I hope that you too will have a chance to experience Krug and flowers, either at home like we did or at one of the many Michelin-starred restaurants whose chefs have also been inspired by the ingredient of the year!
A toast to you,