Krug Grand Cuvee

Our friends Mary and Barry had cause to celebrate this week and they invited us to partake in a meal at the Mystic Oyster Club. Barry had secured a Krug Grand Cuvee while he was in California for this occasion.
As we sipped the current bubbly while downing some of the freshest oysters in town, we kept remembering the other two bottles of Krug Champagne that we drank in November, 2011. It came from Mary's brother Richard's stash. Richard was a knowledgeable and serious collector of wine. At that time the occasion was to celebrate Richard's life as well as host Chee, Joan and Barbara's visit to Connecticut. Chee knew all about the Clos du Mesnil vineyard and enlightened us on the Krug champagnes. We remembered the essence of crème brûlée from the Clos du Mesnil and found the Grand Cuvee to be a bit more of tart green apples and less of the creaminess we remembered from the vintage champagnes.

Barry was soon to be on his way to Scotland, as part of the camera crew filming the British Open in Muirfield and he mentioned that he had 30 hours after his flight landed in Heathrow and his departure for Edinburgh the following day so we thought we could hook him up with Cameron Roucher, vineyard manager at Rathfinny Estate in the UK, gearing up to produce sparking wine in the South Downs of Sussex. Given Barry's affection for champagne, we thought it would be pretty cool if he could visit. I emailed Cameron and he said that it wasn't too onerous a train ride and he could pick Barry up at the train station. (Thank you, Cameron!) The connection looked to be a "go" until Barry's flight was delayed stateside due to the rains and the flight got diverted to Charles DeGaulle airport instead. It would have been pretty cool to see Rathfinny, albeit vicariously through Barry's visit. Barry will have to take a rain check on that one, or make that a sun check!