NV Krug Grande Cuvee 166th Edition 166

NV Krug Grande Cuvee 166th Edition 166

Served double blind, my job is to guess whether it’s a house or a grower champagne, and whether this is a Blanc de Blanc (100% Chardonnay) or a blend? Served extremely chilled, thus I cannot decipher what’s in the bouquet. However, the palate was really impressive, with superbly great intensity, deep and ultra flavorful, and has developed some tertiary notes. The last flavor I detected was some lemon taste, and having just tasted edition 168 about an hour ago, I firmly placed myself this must be a Krug, thus my answer being a House and a blend were all spot on. I just could not tell this is a vintaged champagne or a Krug Grand Cuvee, as the Krug’s Grande Cuvee 166 was a blend of 140 wines from 13 different vintages, with the base vintage being 2010 and the oldest from 1998! Guess scoring 99 points for my blind tasting exam is quite an achievement already, I’ll still have to learn something about trying to differentiate a vintaged from a non vintaged Krug!