The Art of Time: Julie Cavil on Krug Champagne

Julie Cavil: When I joined Krug in 2006, I was incredibly curious and eager to understand. I had already taken an unconventional path, leaving advertising to study oenology and I arrived with many more questions than answers.

Twenty years later, I hope that curiosity is still exactly the same. What has changed is probably my relationship with time and uncertainty. Krug has taught me patience, to observe before deciding, to trust collective intelligence, and to understand that intuition is something you build over years, through thousands of tastings and conversations. I have also learnt that this role is not simply a profession, but a commitment to something larger than yourself : a heritage you receive, nurture and eventually pass on.

I never really approached it as finding my own voice. I had worked alongside Eric for many years and the transition happened gradually, through observation, dialogue and shared experience.

Krug history is always present, but I do not experience it as pressure. It is more like guidance. Joseph Krug’s dream remains our compass, but there is no recipe and every decision belongs fully to the present moment. I have also been fortunate that my own values are deeply aligned with those of the Maison, so I never felt I had to become someone else to take on the role.

One of the wines that has stayed with me is a Krug 1915. When I first joined Krug, one of my projects was to take an inventory of our wine library, bottle by bottle. One day, the cork of a 1915 came out unexpectedly, so we gathered the tasting committee and tasted it blind. Everyone thought it was from the 1950s or 1960s, it was incredibly fresh and vibrant. When we revealed the vintage, it was a wonderful surprise. It reminded me that wine is full of possibilities, and that you have to remain humble in front of it.

And yes, wines still surprise me today. Perhaps that is one of the reasons I am still so passionate about tasting. You can taste wines from neighboring plots, sometimes only meters apart and discover completely different personalities. At Krug, we treat each parcel as an individual, listening to its character before deciding how it might contribute to a blend. And every year, there are wines that surprise us, sometimes from the places we least expect.

I think instinct is really memory accumulated over time. It is built through thousands of tastings, but also through conversations around the Tasting Committee table, seasons in the vineyard, encounters with winegrowers and decisions whose consequences you sometimes only understand years later. All of these experiences stay with you and gradually become part of the way you listen to a wine.

Of course. One of the first things wine teaches you is humility and the first thing you learn at Krug is patience. Today’s truth is not necessarily tomorrow’s, because nature is always greater than we are.

We make decisions whose full consequences may only reveal themselves many years later, so you have to be comfortable with uncertainty. Looking back is therefore essential, not to regret past decisions, but to learn from them. We constantly observe, question, experiment and start again. That is how experience becomes intuition.

I’m very aware of what the milestone represents and I’m happy to see more women being recognized in our industry. But personally, I don’t experience my role through the lens of being a woman. I experience it through the responsibility of being Cellar Master at Krug.

What matters to me is the craft, the transmission of knowledge and the responsibility to preserve what makes Krug unique while continuing to evolve. I was fortunate to have people who opened doors for me and shared their knowledge generously, and I feel the same responsibility towards the people who will come after me. Of course, diversity brings richness. We see that every day in our Tasting Committee, where different generations, experiences and sensibilities contribute to the way we taste and make decisions. But I believe that what ultimately matters is the individual: their talent, their curiosity, their experience and what they bring to the table.

I have always loved music’s ability to create emotion instantly and to make us more present. I have always been very sensitive to rhythm, texture and emotion, and I think there is something deeply intuitive in the way we respond to music, sometimes you feel something before you can put it into words.

Music has always been part of the Maison’s history. Max Richter is a Krug Lover and after spending time in each other’s worlds, we uncovered so many meeting points between our crafts. Every Note Counts is an exploration of our shared vision that craft is in the detail. Listening to his music, one gets the impression it is effortlessness. Yet, behind that clarity lies an enormous amount of meticulous work, something we understand very well at Krug.

Absolutely. What fascinated me was that Max did not simply try to translate flavors into sounds. He responded to the emotional architecture of each Champagne.

Through our conversations, we had to find a common language using images and analogies, metaphors, texture and rhythm. Hearing his compositions gave me another vocabulary for wines I knew intimately. I could suddenly think about them not only through taste and aroma, but through sound, rhythm and shape.

It certainly broadened my perception. Music does not change the champagne itself, but it can change the way we pay attention to it. For me, that is what made this creative encounter so enriching: it did not replace the language of wine, it expanded it. These new perspectives redefined how our craft can be perceived, felt, and remembered, creating a journey that engages the senses in new, unexpected ways.

Perhaps that the most beautiful things cannot be rushed. Champagne has taught me patience, humility and the importance of paying attention, to nature, to others and to the smallest details.

At Krug, individuality and togetherness are not opposites. We preserve the identity of each wine and each parcel and then bring these different personalities together to create something that could not exist through one voice alone. I think that is a beautiful lesson for life too: to remain true to who you are, while being curious enough to listen to others, and patient enough to let things become what they are meant to be.