Krug - Clos du Mesnil Brut Blanc de Blancs Champagne 2002 (750ml)
Price: $2800.00
| Producer | Krug |
| Country | France |
| Region | Champagne |
| Varietal | Chardonnay |
| Vintage | 2002 |
| Sku | 8626 |
| Size | 750ml |
Decanter: 100 Points
Singly and emphatically the greatest Champagne release of recent years. Grand malic acidity of dizzyingly heightened proportions is swept up in an immense, all-consuming tidal wave of frothing, sea-salt minerality, crashing with such structure that any mortal wine would collapse breathless in its wake. Yet herein lies the triumph of 2002, the vintage that more than any other reverberates with looming structure, yet meets it commandingly with awe-inspiring fruit presence. This sets it with a life expectancy of a century, no less. (Drink between 2022-2102)
James Suckling: 100 Points
This is a wine with staggering length and immense purity. It's as powerful as chardonnay can be, showcasing an incredible depth of pure fresh lemons, yellow grapefruit, honey and dried white and yellow flowers. The concentration and complexity of primary fruits are outstanding, and there are some more exotic flavors here too in the peach and green-mango spectrum. The texture is ultra-fine and creamy through the mid-palate, its majestic curves sweeping long around a sturdy mineral core. This is very silky and focused, offering gently creamy moments before twisting towards a composed, restricted and compressed chalk-like finish. It delivers an impression of chardonnay that captures incredible richness, fleshiness, persistence and power. Yet the acidity is staggering while being simultaneously perfectly balanced. Drink now but this will have a lot more to come after 2020.
John Gilman: 100 Points
I have been waiting the release of the 2002 Clos du Mesnil bottling from Krug since soon after the quality of this exceptional vintage was confirmed. Like all wines from the house of Krug, patience has been required, as the team here is not about to let a legend out of the cellars until it has had its proper and relaxed elevage, but at age fifteen, the wait is over and this monument to this great and unique terroir is now hitting the market. The wine aged thirteen years sur latte in the Krug cellars in Reims, prior to disgorgement in the winter of 2015. The wine offers up a deep, pure and youthful bouquet of fresh apricot, pear, a marvelously complex base of chalky soil tones, hints of the crème patissière to come, a dollop of fresh nutmeg and a nice touch of citrus zest in the upper register. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and seamless, with the inherent power of the 2002 vintage very much in evidence in its bottomless core, but with the overall profile of the wine one of unrepentant refinement. As stunningly beautiful as the fruit component is here, the wine is more defined by its brilliant mineral drive on the palate, with its elegant mousse, perfect balance and very, very long, nascently complex and laser-like finish the stuff of legends. The wine seems to attain its lift and backend energy from its limestone mineral drive, rather than the bright, zesty acidity and the overall impression is of almost otherworldly perfection. I have been fortunate to taste every single vintage of Clos du Mesnil since the inaugural vintage of 1979, but the 2002 is the finest I have ever come across in the first blush of youth. It will live for more than half a century and really deserves many more years in the cellar to allow it to completely blossom, but it is going to be no easy task to defer gratification, as the wine is pure magic already! (Drink between 2025-2085)
dWine Enthusiast: 99 Points
Pure Chardonnay from the walled vineyard in the heart of Le Mesnil, this intense wine from a great vintage is tight and mineral, still showing hints of toast from its barrel fermentation. With its taut texture, complex acidity and crisp citrus, it's very young, but will age indefinitely. Showing the beauty of Chardonnay in Champagne at its best, it will certainly still be impressive come 2030.
Wine Spectator: 98 Points
A lovely, lacy Champagne, with ripe apricot, fennel seed and espresso aromas. This caresses the palate with a finely detailed mousse and expansive flavors of pineapple pâte de fruit, toasted brioche, fleur de sel and grated ginger. Long and chalky on the finish, this is a prima ballerina, showing power cloaked in grace. Disgorged winter 2015. Drink now through 2032.
Wine Advocate: 98+ Points
Krug's beautifully citrus colored 2002 Blanc de Blancs Brut Clos du Mesnil (ID 415068 - disgorged IV/2015) shows a deep complex very clear and precise if not etherial bouquet with citrus aromas intertwined with chalk and noble brioche notes in the background. Pure profound and vibrantly fresh on the palate this is a straight athletic very intense and expressive yet highly elegant and finessed Clos du Mesnil with a unique fresh fruit character! The 2002 reveals a great mineral structure and chalky texture on the palate. The highly complex energetic finish reveals bracing freshness and vitality as well as the charm and creaminess from the vinification in barrels and possibly the dosage wine that seems to boost the Krug style. While terroir wine is the result of hands-off winemaking Krug's Clos du Mesnil is perhaps a very particular Krug Champagne?it has great quality style and complexity that is the result of the winemaking and the addition of the dosage wine. How the Clos du Mesnil would taste if farmed biodynamically picked later and dosed with nothing but itself is a pointless question but it hasn't left my mind since I tasted the paradoxical 2002 which is terribly fresh on one hand and also has this unique Krug reserve style. Notabene: This doesn't include the hypothesis that the wine could be any better. It would just be different and surely less "Krug" which is not what we really want do we? Tasted April 2018. Krug's Olivier Krug and I didn't get together during my first four years at The Wine Advocate?we were both traveling a lot and our paths didn't cross for years. They still didn't cross in April this year but thanks to president Magareth Henriquez I was welcomed by PR Manager Romain Cappelaere and the charming Julie Murez who guided me through the impressive cellars before she handed me over not to the expected cellar master Eric Lebel (who had to cancel at the last minute) but his young and jocular oenology department manager Julie Cavil with whom I tasted the cuvées. Julie has been with Krug since 2006 and is Lebel's righthand man. After the welcome aperitif in the family house (the 162nd edition of Krug's Grande Cuvée) I tasted in this order: 2002 Clos du Mesnil 2002 Clos d'Ambonnay 2002 and 2004 Vintage Brut and the 158th edition of the Grande Cuvée which is also based on the great 2002 vintage though it tries to overcome the vintage style. As readers know Krug's utterly generous golden-yellow colored Grande Cuvée a composition of 120 to 200+ base wines three grape varieties and 15 to 20+ vintages is the first prestige cuvée re-created each year yet without letting the vintage play the first fiddle. Without guidance I probably would have tasted the wines the other way around to end up with the very particular single-vintage single-vineyard single-variety "Anti-Krugs." Yet this is not the Krug philosophy. The Grande Cuvée is by far the most important wine of the house and the prestigious quintessence of the house style that is always more important than anything else perhaps more important than even vintage even single vineyard... The generous complex mature but fresh and certainly highly finessed and elegant Krug style is achieved by many steps for example: a wide range of vineyards in top locations; an early harvest; the individual vinification of each pressing; alcoholic (and malolactic) fermentation and aging until February in old small oak barrels; the reserve wine library with 150 individual wines from about 15 different vintages; the long lees aging of five to eight years... However starting the tasting with Krug's single-vineyard cuvées from the glorious 2002 vintage is not the worst entry into a tasting day. Krug's Grande Cuvée was released the first time in 1843 and starting with the 158th Edition it displays the edition number on the front label which helps to speak not just about a famous brand and great Champagne but also about a specific edition. That's why we have just started to give each edition its own entry in our database because it previously was impossible to know which edition the reviewer was talking about. More transparency is also given by the ID code a six-digit number located on the upper left hand side of the back label whose first three digits indicate the period of disgorgement (for example 108 means: first quarter 2008). On Krug's website consumers can now get insight into some technical data of each cuvée which had been a secret for so many years. The ID code can also be used as a reference to collect bottles and enjoy them whenever it seems to be appropriate. Published: Jun 29 2018
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