Krug Turns Champagne Tasting Into Live Song at Larrabee Studios

Krug will turn guests' tasting notes into an original song, composed live, inside Studio 6 at Los Angeles' Larrabee Studios from Sept. 28-30. The Champagne house calls the project "The Art of Blending Krug & Sound," and it opens to paying guests after a VIP preview Thursday night that drew Nas, Jeremy Pope, Ashlee Simpson Ross, Evan Ross, Sabrina Claudio, producer Dahi and pianist Chloe Flower.

Manny Marroquin, the 14-time Grammy-winning mixing engineer who owns Larrabee and most recently worked on Rosalía's "LUX," leads the experiment with producers Scott Tibbs, Nick Rosen and Mike Bennett. The mechanism is simple but unusual: guests taste each pour, write down the emotions and sensations it triggers, and the producers use those reactions as raw material for a composition assembled in the room over the course of the evening.

How does the tasting actually work?

The evening centers on Krug 2013 and Krug Grande Cuvée 169ème Édition, with Chef Oscar Torres of VERSE serving a multi-course dinner alongside additional pours of Krug Grande Cuvée 173ème Édition and Krug Rosé 29ème Édition.

At the preview, that process produced concrete results. Words like "red," "invigorating" and "nostalgia" fed into two songs played on cello, piano and drums. Between courses, the studio played tracks with their own Larrabee history, including John Mayer's "Gravity" and Portugal. The Man's "Feel It Still." Flower closed the night with a surprise live piano performance as a jeroboam of Krug Grande Cuvée 163ème Édition came out for a final pour.

"Larrabee has always been a place where creativity comes to life through exchange," Marroquin said. "Partnering with Krug gave us the opportunity to invite guests into that process, where every conversation, every shared moment and every glass of Champagne becomes part of the music we're creating together. No two evenings will ever be the same."

What does this change for Krug?

The project isn't a one-off stunt for the house. Krug has spent years testing the relationship between music and taste, working with musicians and composers — most recently Max Richter — to examine how sound shapes perception and emotion while drinking. Larrabee extends that research into a ticketed format.

There's also an access angle. Studio 6 rarely opens to the public, and the sessions offer that access through a limited number of reservations on Tock. Drinking Krug inside a working recording studio is normally a night reserved for people with a platinum record on the wall — that scarcity is part of the draw.

After the three-night run ends, the collaboration continues at Larrabee's neighboring restaurants VERSE and Mensano, where Torres will serve a month-long Krug Grande Cuvée pairing built on the project. That extension gives the experiment a life beyond the studio, and gives Krug a longer runway to test whether sound-driven tasting can become a format rather than a weekend event.