Inflight Magazine of Brussels Airlines

In person

Text Chris Peck

Olivier Krug

As the sixth generation to be running the family champagne business, Olivier Krug has a weighty responsibility on his shoulders. After working in various departments, including launching Krug in Japan and making the country its number one market, he’s recently inherited the title of Directeur de la maison from his father. On a visit to London, he talks to b.there! about what it means to be head of one of the most famous champagne houses in the world

I’m fascinated with this job. As a boy I lived next to the main house, so I was woken up every morning by the noise of the barrels being rolled through the streets. I grew up surrounded by Krug, but my father never talked about the business at home. He wasn’t teaching us – he wasn’t coming in saying, “This is the new vintage.” Everything was done to open our mind to curiosity.

I have a fantastic responsibility to look after the single growers who try to extract the best from sometimes small vineyards to supply Krug, and to contribute to this symphony of taste, as well as looking after my family company.

Every year we have grapes with different qualities. They don’t have the same amount of sugar, they might be very acidic, they may not have ripened the same way, or they may not have developed the same type of aroma or texture. We use three types of grape, but each has a very distinct taste, because they all come from various villages in the local area. Due to changes between soil, the exposure to sun, wind and rain and because of what we call the terroir, the same Chardonnay grape from the same year, and taken from different villages, will not taste the same.

It is like five violins made by Stradivarius from the same piece of wood on the same day. They may sound the same to the untrained ear, but there will be slight nuances audible only to the expert. This is the same for our wines.

Five or six years ago I was invited to Florence to have dinner with the most influential people in the city. My agent collected me from the hotel and we drove for at least an hour into the hills. When we arrived everybody had congregated in the main square of the village where they had a huge fire – we had a champagne and pizza night. There were politicians, businessmen, artists and lawyers, and they all said the best way they enjoy Krug is when it fits into their own lifestyle. We spent the night eating the best pizza ever, with magnums of Krug Grande Cuvée and a few bottles of Rosé.

In champagne production, there are rules everywhere – it sounds bureaucratic but it’s very important to protect the quality. Even to make a simple champagne, you have a lot of rules about where the grapes come from, what type of grapes you can use, how you prune your vineyard, what quantity of grape you can select from one hectare, and even down to the way you press the grapes.

London is the most extraordinary place in the world to enjoy our champagne because we have a very long history here. It’s the only city in the world where you can meet people who are younger than me who knew my grandfather. We have a fantastic place where I go almost every time I’m in London, which now has three or four sister establishments around the world. We call it the Krug Room, it seats just 12. It’s one of the most understated and elegant places in the city, in the kitchen of The Dorchester Hotel. Henri Brosi, head chef of The Dorchester, which has a kitchen team of perhaps 100-130 people I believe, cooks for you himself. He’s the boss of an organisation that is five times bigger than our house and he’s actually cooking for you. If he’s travelling, or busy, he would refuse to give a meal in the Krug Room, so it’s extremely serious and very personal.

Every year we will select 80, 100, or 120 wines that will be blended together to produce what we call Krug Grande Cuvée. We have a library of wines from previous years, and we taste almost 1,000 samples from 2008 backwards, going all the way back to 1995. If our 2009 wine is missing acidity, vitality or fruitiness, I have the answer somewhere in my library, so we will pick the wines whose personality will combine the best with our 2009 product to make a wine that will have the same taste as every bottle we have released since my grandfather started Krug in 1843. And I believe that is where we stand out from other champagne houses.

We also have a Krug Room in Berlin, at the Adlon Hotel. Our Berlin chef is called Tim Raue, and all our chefs have spent one of the most important periods of their careers in London. They all have a very different style of cooking, and so this year we’re organising a Krug Room chef tour. We want to have all the chefs cooking together, sharing their knowledge of food and their love of Krug. This is very historic for us, and especially historic for Berlin and London.

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