Julie Cavil

GaultMillau: How did you become cellar master at Krug? What was your career path?

Julie Cavil: If someone had told me that twenty years ago, I'd never have believed it! My parents weren't in the wine business, so I went to Celsa and then business school, before working for six years in an advertising agency. During these six years, I trained my tastes and went wine-tasting with friends. My passion for wine grew very quickly, so I decided to take the plunge. My husband took a job in Champagne, so I went back to school, first with a BTS in viticulture-oenology, then the DNO (diplôme national d'œnologue); I then did my internships at Moët et Chandon, Dom Pérignon, and joined Krug in 2006. Quite quickly, the cellar master [Éric Lebel, cellar master for twenty-one years, editor's note] and I felt that there would be a continuation, and then voilà... we began a long transition, little by little. In 2014, I took over as head of the oenology department, and in 2020, the blending department as well. It's a wonderful story.

G&M: At Krug, you link wines to music. Grande Cuvée is the orchestra, the Clos are the soloists. So, are you more of a soloist or a conductor?

J. C.: Orchestra conductor, clearly! If we can make an orchestra, it's because we have a multitude of soloists to play together. Each parcel is treated individually, listened to for itself, treated as if it could potentially be a soloist. With our partner winemakers, we cultivate differences, personalities, to have the most contrasting palette possible, then reconcile them in a single bottle, like an orchestra.

G&M: Today's soloist is Clos du Mesnil. How are things going for you?

J. C.: Le Clos' vins clairs are tasted like the others, blind, and then we decide whether to make (or not to make) a dedicated cuvée, to reserve them or to allocate them to the blend. Le Clos is made exactly like the other wines. We don't choose different barrels, we don't use different viticulture methods, we have the same obsession with picking dates as for the other parcels. In the Clos, there are younger and older vines, sunnier and shadier. We don't harvest everything at once. We're looking for the best expression of citrus fruit. We don't want the vegetal side or the yellow fruit; we're looking for that balance of perfectly ripe citrus. If we harvested Clos du Mesnil in one morning, which would be feasible, we'd have a lovely wine, but there would probably be a little too much ripeness, a little too little ripeness... so we harvest in several batches, up to ten times in some years.

G&M: How do you come to the decision to release Clos du Mesnil 2008 now, not before or after?

J. C.: It's the tasting that decides. We taste the bottles very regularly to see how far they've come, and how fast they're evolving before disgorging. Then, we anticipate the dosage tests, generally around 4 g/l, and leave for at least eight months before tasting again. If we decide to disgorge, there's another twelve months before we can bring them to market... So we have to anticipate a lot. Sometimes, the order of vintages is turned upside down - like 1989 before 1988, or 2003 before 2002. It's really the tasting that decides. It's always a very difficult decision to make. If we listened to ourselves, we'd always expect more... but there are wine-lovers who love them for their freshness. For "Collection", we keep bottles of vintages on the lees. We taste them regularly, watch the aromas concentrate and evolve, and when it shows a new facet of itself, we represent it as "Collection".

G&M: Are all the bottles of Clos du Mesnil from a given year disgorged at once?

J. C.: It depends, some Clos have been disgorged all at once. For 2008, there are several batches, so several disgorgements. We don't make a "Collection" version of the clos. On the other hand, there's one rule we don't compromise on: that of the famous twelve months in the cellar after disgorgement.

G&M: Let's come back to Krug Grande Cuvée, whose 164th edition is being tasted today. It relies heavily on reserve wines from previous years. How do you select which clear wines to use each year, and which to keep in reserve for future years?

J. C.: The first step is the spring tasting. All the wines are tasted blind with the committee and I already give my first orientations on each sample. When I see wines that are well-structured, have a certain liveliness and will stand the test of time, I opt to put them in reserve. When the wine is really magnificent, we say to ourselves that we're going to keep it. For others that were very beautiful in winter, a little less so in spring, but for which I feel the potential, well, I'll put them in reserve too. After this initial orientation, I go back over them several times, rework them and, based on my 4000 notes, create the ideal "Grande Cuvée" blend. Reserve wines account for between 30% and 50% of the blend, which means that every year, I also put this percentage of the year's new wines back into reserve. Krug is the school of patience: some of the wines I reserve today will be worked on by subsequent generations. I leave wines, but also entire books of notes on our trials, our decisions and our choices today.

G&M: Can you tell us about 2008?

J. C.: I'm very happy to present these three cuvées (Clos du Mesnil 2008, Millésime 2008, and the 164th edition of Grande Cuvée recreated around the 2008 vintage), because it's a year that I find absolutely magical. It's one of those great classic years, with a truly Champagne climate, slow ripening, no jerks, and very structured, straightforward wines, as vertical as oak trees. 2008 makes all the difference between intensity and power: it produces sublime, charismatic wines, but without overdoing it. They're very chiselled, and have a very special brilliance.

G&M: Isn't 2008, in certain respects, a little too perfect, a bit like top of the class?

J. C.: At Krug, we give our vintages little names. 2008 is "Timeless Elegance". It's the great classic, the little opera rat that twirls without a hair out of place. Top of the class, yes, but too perfect, no.

G&M: What's special about this 2008 vintage?

J. C.: Yes, one particularity: it's a majority of pinot noir (53%) and a little more meunier (25%) than chardonnay (22%), but that's not deliberate, it's the result of tasting.

G&M: To summarize and conclude, could you give three expressions for each of these three wines?

J. C.: Clos du Mesnil: "The purest expression of Chardonnay as seen by Krug."

Vintage: "The music of a year", never the same, sometimes a brass band, sometimes a string quartet.

Grande Cuvée: "The orchestra", the reconciliation of paradoxes, the music of Champagne.

Clos du Mesnil 2008 will be available from the best wine merchants in September.