The 2008 vintage of Clos du Mesnil is slated to be released in September of this year. I was fortunate to have a chance to preview the wine during Krug’s Cellar Master, Julie Cavil’s recent visit to New York. As readers may recall, 2008 was a very classically-styled vintage, which Julie terms the “last traditional growing season we have had in Champagne,” with the grapes for the Clos du Mesnil having been harvested between September 19th and 21st of this year. The wine was aged for more than a dozen years sur latte and is truly stunning, offering up a precise, chiseled bouquet of pear, apple, a touch of passion fruit, salty limestone minerality, pastry tones, dried flowers and a topnote of lemon zest. On the palate the wine is deep, pure, full-bodied and laser-like in its precision, with a beautiful core of fruit, great mineral drive and cut, utterly refined mousse and a very, very long, seamlessly balanced and hauntingly complex finish. This wine may close down again once it has a chance to settle in from travel, but for the moment, it is beautifully balanced that it is quite accessible in its youthful guise. This will be a legendary vintage of Clos du Mesnil in the years to come and should prove to be almost timeless and probably will merit a perfect score when it reaches its pinnacle of maturity a decade or two down the road!