Flowers are such an essential element at parties big and small. They make the table come alive. Sometimes they release a fragrance in the air to liven things up, and they fill the room with colors and shapes and verve.

But flowers unleashed even more of their magic at a dinner organized by Cebu businessman and real estate developer Joel Rama del Prado with his wife Carla Larrazabal del Prado by his side in collaboration with Moet Hennsessy at Chef Alain, a French bistro and brasserie tucked away on the mezzanine of what used to be a children's play and party center in BGC.

The object of the dinner was Krug, the centuries-old Champagne house, founded in 1843 by Joseph Krug at the heart of France’s Champagne region, and its ongoing “Single Ingredient’ campaign, which has since 2015 honored a single ingredient in world gastronomy on which to collaborate with chefs, whom the House of Krug calls ambassade chefs, across the world for a Champagne pairing and culinary adventure.

The campaign is as fantastic as it is simple and singleminded, if not sublimely humble. In 2015, the toast was the potato, followed in 2016 by the egg, and then by the mushroom in 2017, and then by fish in 2018…now it’s 2024 and it’s Krug x Flower.

At the center of Joel’s “Single Ingredient” dinner was, of course, the sparkling wine and not just sparkling wine originated and produced in Champagne under the rules of the appellation, but prestige Champagne from the House of Krug, particularly the Krug Grande Cuvée 171st Edition and Krug Vintage 2008.

Krug Grande Cuvée 171ème Édition is a house special, described by the Champagne house as “the 171st recreation of the most generous expression of Champagne,” crafted carefully over two decades in honor of its founder. It’s a blend of 131 wines handpicked from a span of 12 different years, the youngest of which is from 2015, the oldest from 2000, and aged for around seven years in Krug’s cellars to enable it to develop the ultimate in expression and elegance.

Krug Vintage 2008 is an ode to the year 2008, one of the least sunny years in the Champagne wine region in half a century and also the coolest in recent history with moderate rainfall and generally no extreme temperatures, perfect for grape maturation.

While the Champagne provided the raison d’etre of the dinner for 24 Joel and Carla threw for Krug, the flowers did not play second fiddle, not the matthiola, carnations, and lisianthus, not the roses, hellebores, and tulips, not the gerberas, dancing ladies, and preserved hyrdrangeas, not the yellow gypsos, egg asters, and lavenders, all of which turned the venue into a veritable Garden of Eden.

True to the Krug x Single Ingredient tradition, the tasting menu prepared by chef Alain Raye, after whom the restaurant has been eponymously named, was a parade of this year’s single ingredient, a parade of flowers.

The starter set was abloom. Lavender opened the show with carpaccio scallops and winter truffles. Red begonia followed with red prawn. Blue ternate, otherwise known as bluebellvine, strutted its stuff with oyster and jelly while roses did its own in a cold soup of leek, emulsion peas, and pears.

As for the main courses, cosmos played up the lobster and caviar eggplant while calendulas prettified the volaille de Bresse, the plat-du-jour, a delightful dish from chickens of the Bresse Gauloise breed raised only in Bresse, a historic province in eastern France. The chicken comes with an AOC, appellation d’origine contrôlée, status. It is also registered as a Protected Designation of Origin under EU and UK law as Volaille de Bresse, Poulet de Bresse, Poularde de Bresse, or Chapon de Bresse.  

For dessert, we had sweet williams with our chocolate tart and hibiscus with our lemon tart.

Abounding with blooms was the company as well as the Champagne-enhanced conviviality, seated at a long table for 24, along with Joel and Carla, friends old and new all toasting to life’s seasons of blossoming.

The evening, perfumed by flowers, buoyed by friendship, was truly spirit-lifting and, in a word, fun. As American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson has put it in Hamatreya, his eternal poem from the mid-1800s, “the earth laughs in flowers.”