Krug launched Every Note Counts on October 15th, pairing three 2008 champagnes with original compositions by Max Richter exploring craft and perfection.
When you’re dealing with real luxury, it’s not about throwing money around. It’s about the small things. The single grape that makes it into the bottle. The exact moment you decide to harvest.
The way one musical note rings out instead of another. This is what connects Maison Krug’s latest project, “Every Note Counts,” which brings together Krug Cellar Master Julie Cavil and composer Max Richter. Launched on 15th October 2025, the collaboration asks a simple question: what happens when champagne-making and musical composition sit down together? Turns out, they have a lot to talk about.
Two Artists, One Philosophy
Joseph Krug founded his house in Reims back in 1843 with what was, for the time, a radical idea. He wanted to make the best champagne possible every single year. Not just in the good years. Every year.
This meant getting to know every vineyard plot intimately, paying attention to each wine’s individual character, and building up a massive library of reserve wines from different vintages. Six generations later, that vision still drives everything the house does.
Julie Cavil lives and breathes this tradition. When 2008 rolled around with near-perfect growing conditions, she saw something special. The harvest was exceptional, and she decided to create three distinct champagne expressions from it. Each one shows a different side of what Krug does and what that particular year had to offer.
Then there’s Max Richter.
One of the biggest names in contemporary music right now, he’s racked up over three billion streams by doing something most composers don’t: he makes classical music feel modern without losing what makes it powerful.
He mixes traditional orchestration with electronic elements, and somehow it works. His ability to turn human experience into sound made him the obvious choice for this project.
More Than Just Pairing Wine and Music
“Every Note Counts” isn’t about sipping champagne while nice music plays in the background. It’s a real conversation between two people who believe the same thing: excellence lives in the details.
The project spans from the cellars in Reims to Richter’s studio in Oxfordshire, but it’s held together by one conviction. Whether you’re making champagne or composing music, every note counts.
The project centres on three champagnes from that 2008 harvest, called “Krug from Soloist to Orchestra in 2008 (Act 2).” Each champagne is different. Each one inspired Richter to write an original piece of music that captures what makes it unique.
Three Champagnes, Three Pieces
Start with Krug Clos d’Ambonnay 2008. This is the rarest champagne Krug makes. Clos d’Ambonnay is tiny: 0.68 hectares, walled in, right in the middle of Ambonnay, which is one of Champagne’s top Grand Cru villages.
It’s planted entirely with Pinot Noir. The wines from this plot are intensely concentrated and pure. The 2008 from this single plot is about as focused as champagne gets. One grape variety, one plot, one year.
Richter wrote “Clarity” in response. A solo piece. It captures that radical purity and focused intensity. Just like the wine distils a specific place and moment, Richter’s composition strips away everything unnecessary to reveal something crystalline.
The second expression is Krug 2008, a vintage champagne that shows off what that exceptional year could do. Unlike Clos d’Ambonnay’s single-vineyard focus, this one draws from multiple plots and uses both Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.
It’s more complex, more multifaceted. This champagne shows Krug’s ability to take the best of what a year offers and create something where the whole is greater than its parts.
Richter’s response is “Ensemble,” a chamber composition. Chamber music depends on multiple instruments playing together, each one essential. Same idea here. Different vineyard plots and grape varieties work in harmony.
The third expression is Krug Grande Cuvée 164ème Édition. This is Krug’s signature 1 and maybe the ultimate expression of what Joseph Krug dreamed up in the first place. It’s assembled from 127 wines spanning 11 different years.
Grande Cuvée transcends any single vintage. It’s Joseph Krug’s original vision made real: create the finest champagne every year by drawing on an extensive library of reserve wines, each one contributing its own character.
For this most complex champagne, Richter composed “Sinfonia.” The most expansive of the three pieces. Like a symphony orchestra bringing together dozens of musicians to create something magnificent, Grande Cuvée 164ème Édition represents the culmination of Krug’s art. A champagne that captures not just a moment but the accumulated wisdom and character of multiple harvests.
What They’re Actually Doing
Richter and Cavil call these three musical pieces “a recomposition of the year 2008,not as a moment frozen in time, but as one that resonates across senses.” Which sounds abstract, but here’s what it means. Richter isn’t just writing pretty music to play while you drink expensive champagne. He’s responding to what Cavil made.
Think of 2008 as the source material.
Cavil takes that year and turns it into wine through her choices about which grapes to use, how to blend them, and how long to age them. She’s working from decades of knowing these vineyards, understanding what each plot does in different conditions.
Richter takes those same champagnes and asks: What would this sound like? Not in a literal sense, but emotionally. What music matches the feeling of drinking Clos d’Ambonnay versus Grande Cuvée?
So the music isn’t decoration. It’s interpretation. A second reading of the same year, just in a completely different medium.
This matters because most wine-and-arts pairings treat the art as background. Nice to have, adds to the atmosphere. Here, the music and the champagne are doing the same kind of work, just with different tools.
How They Work
Both Cavil and Richter are stubborn perfectionists, which is probably why this works. Neither one takes shortcuts. They both obsess over details that most people wouldn’t notice. And they’re both willing to experiment, even when the safe choice is right there.
For Cavil, that stubbornness shows up in how she treats each vineyard plot as its own thing. Different plots give you different characteristics, and different years bring out different qualities. Some wines need years to develop properly. So you wait. The fact that she made three separate expressions from 2008 instead of just one vintage champagne tells you everything. She wanted to see what else that year could do.
Richter’s approach is similar, just in sound instead of taste.
He’s trying to capture something specific with each piece. Not just “fancy music for fancy wine,” but music that actually matches what you’re experiencing when you taste these champagnes. The taste itself. The emotions it brings up. That’s harder than it sounds. You’re translating one sense into another, finding sound equivalents for flavour and texture and feeling.
What’s interesting is that both champagne and music work the same way in time. You don’t get the whole thing at once. It reveals itself gradually. First impressions shift. New elements emerge. Both require you to balance different components, knowing when to push something forward and when to let it sit back. Technical skill gets you in the door, but the best work goes beyond technique into something you feel rather than analyse.
The Long Game
This isn’t Krug’s first rodeo with trying new things. Joseph Krug was breaking rules from day one back in 1843. Most champagne houses at the time were focused on single vintages. Krug said no, the point is to make the best champagne you can every single year, whatever it takes.
That required building the reserve wine library, which was a massive bet. You’re setting aside wines from each harvest, keeping them separated by plot, storing them for years or even decades before you know exactly how you’ll use them. Some might sit there for a very long time before they find their place in a blend. You need patience for that. And faith that future winemakers will know what to do with what you’ve saved.
That library is now one of Krug’s biggest advantages. Multiple decades of harvests, all catalogued and preserved. Each wine is waiting to contribute something specific to a future blend.
So when Krug brings in Max Richter for this project, it’s not random. It’s the same mindset applied to a different problem. They didn’t just license some existing classical music or commission generic background tracks. They asked Richter to sit with these champagnes and respond to them as an artist. The result is something that couldn’t exist any other way.
Why Richter
Richter’s career has been about crossing boundaries. He’s a composer, pianist, and producer who doesn’t really fit into one category.
Classical training, but he works with electronic elements. Serious music that somehow also connects with people who don’t usually listen to serious music. Over three billion streams, which is not normal for this kind of work.
His most famous pieces include “Sleep,” which is eight hours long and meant to be played while you’re actually sleeping. There’s “Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons,” where he took the Baroque original and reimagined it for modern listeners.
He’s done film and TV scores that brought his music to people who’d never seek it out otherwise. A lot of his work deals with memory, time, and how we experience being human. Which makes him a good fit for champagne that’s literally made from multiple years and meant to capture more than just one harvest.
