User:Tristan.sbry

Hello everyone,

My name is Tristan, and I am the author of the article I proposed for this page : [[1]]

I work closely with KRUG. In fact they contacted me to write the copy for this article and I had meetings with Margareth Henriquez (President & CEO of the House of Krug)to do so.

By the way, you can find below a message from her.

--Tristan.sbry (talk) 15:01, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Dear Wikipedia Members

I am Margareth Henriquez, President & CEO of the House of Krug since January 2009.

My career in the world of wines and spirits spans twenty-seven years; including the eight years I spent as President and CEO of all Moët Hennessy properties in Argentina, where I carried Krug in our portfolio. I have a degree in systems engineering from the Metropolitan University in Venezuela and completed an advanced program at Harvard University. I am currently working on my PhD in business at the Swiss Management Centre.

I love history and facts, which is why I love Wikipedia: it is an objective reference of accurate, straightforward information. I have been using Wikipedia for years.

I realise now that, before coming to Krug, I did not understand Krug champagne and this was greatly due to the company itself. But we are determined to correct this. It took me over a year to comprehend the processes and techniques that go into making our champagne, which says a lot, as I have dedicated almost an entire decade to winemaking and viticulture and another decade to blending spirits.

After that long first year, I realised that I had established all the whats but not the whys: we did not know much about the man who founded Krug, nor the subsequent generations who have contributed to the House. For example, I discovered that Joseph Krug was Catholic, not Protestant, as was historically thought – a critical fact to understanding his motivations. And we continued to uncover information about him, thanks in part to the book written by John Arlott and another written a bit later by Henri and Remi Krug, as well as from interviews with them. We were also helped enormously by Fabienne Moreau, a historian who works with our group, and Nigel Fountain, an English historian and writer, who assisted us in putting every fact into historical context.

All this to say that I realised Krug has become a sort of caricature over the years by centring its message around oak barrels, insisting that this is what makes us different. But that is not at all true. As John Arlott’s book points out, in 1866 – a mere twenty-three years after its founding – Krug was already considered one of the most prestigious champagne houses. But as all houses used oak barrels at that time – and continued to do so until the 1950s – that couldn’t possibly be what set Krug apart.

Instead, it is our approach to every individual plot, from every grower, to assure that every wine represents one plot, rather than a blend of grapes or wines that are not known individually.

When I arrived at Krug, I asked Eric Lebel, our Chef de Caves, to invite me to everything they do, so as to better understand the House. Krug, as all other champagne houses, invites its growers to come and taste the wines of the year. The difference is that, at Krug, growers come to taste their wines, the result of their work in each and every one of the plots harvested and sent to the House, down to 2,000 kg for even the smallest of plots.

Once, when I first arrived at Krug, there was a tasting with the owner of three plots in Buzy, an excellent village for Pinot Noir. We had eight wines from her plots in our reserve wines library (we maintain 150 tanks containing individual plot’s wines from 12 different years over a period of 16 years). We began by commenting on the year, and the grower on her experience. We then tasted all the reserve wines before moving on to the three wines from that year’s harvest. The first was full of red fruit and elegant aromas; the second less aromatic but with significant length and structure. However, the third was completely over ripened and could not be used by the House. What is interesting is that this wine came from a very good plot and had been picked at the same time as the others. But according to our Chef de Caves, it should have been harvested three days earlier. As it turns out, the viticulture manager was new and recognised the mistake; the owner assured us it would never happen again, and it has not.

This is what truly makes Krug different. As our founder stated: although it is possible to make good cuvees with bad or mediocre elements, these are exceptions on which we should never rely. It is this philosophy of never blending anything that is not known individually that ensures the House’s quality. Therefore, out of loyalty to this principle, Paul Krug II decided in the 1950s to continue using oak barrels when others moved to tanks, for he knew that tanks would never allow the flexibility needed to respect individual wines.

Having worked in this industry for so long, I know what oak barrels represent in people’s minds, and it is not champagne. At Krug, oak barrels are mere containers, small ones the house needs to ensure the individuality of every plot’s wine. But we have put them so much in the forefront of our marketing that people think Krug champagnes are born and kept in oak barrels, which is not the case. In fact, one of the House’s specialties is to remove all the oak before using the barrels, filling them for the first two or three years with second or third grape juices, whose fermentation process rids the oak of any woody aroma. Moreover, it is never mentioned that, at the same time as the House decided to keep small oak barrels to assure each wine’s individuality, it also moved to stainless steel tanks to preserve the freshness of its reserve wines. In fact, it was among the first to do so. More recently, following its purchase by LVMH, there has been significant investment to avoid unnecessary oxidation, ensuring a freshness in our champagne from the very beginning. For these reasons, Wine Spectator has rated Krug the best house of wine and/or champagne for over eighteen years and has even increased its ratings in recent years to over 95/100. Indeed, this year alone every one of Krug’s Champagnes made it into the top 14 of Wine Spectator’s best champagnes.

But because Krug has over-emphasised the role of oak barrels, the public has a pre-conceived notion of how our champagne should taste. And as you know, what we have in our mind colours our experience. So here, I would like to come back to the importance of Wikipedia. As I said, I like so very much its objective side – that its information comes not from perceptions, but from real facts. Which is why I would like the Wikipedia community to reconsider rewriting its entry on Krug to help people genuinely understand and properly know our champagne, as the current entry does not accurately reflect what the House represents. Of course, it goes without saying, we invite you to Krug to verify every word I have mentioned here.

With all my respect and appreciation for having taken the time to read my letter,

Margareth Henriquez

President & CEO of the House of Krug