Small but important Champagne house founded in Rheims in 1843 by Johann-Joseph Krug, who was born in Mainz, Germany, in 1800. By 1893 the firm occupied its current modest cellars, around whose courtyard the Krug family still live. Krug does not make an ordinary non-vintage champagne but specializes exclusively in prestige cuvées, of which the multi-vintage Grande Cuvée is the flagship. Consistently producing champagne that is among the most admired in its region of origin, Krug is the only house to persist in barrel fermentation of its entire production of base wine, in old 205-l/54-gal casks. Wines from at least six and sometimes nine different vintages make up the blend for Grande Cuvée, one of the most distinctive and long lived of champagnes. Grande Cuvée, with new packaging and a special bottle, succeeded the rather fuller-bodied Private Cuvée as Krug's most important product in 1979. In 1971, Krug acquired and replanted the Clos du Mesnil, a walled vineyard of less than 2 ha/5 acres. Its Chardonnay grapes provide one of Champagne's very few single-vineyard, or cru, wines of which the 1979 vintage was the first. Small quantities of the finest vintage Krug are released as Krug Collection about ten years after their initial release. Although the firm is run by members of the fifth and sixth generation of champagne-making Krugs, it has been owned by LVMH since 1999.