The champagne consumer is bewildered with choice for a reason; there are 410 houses, 120 cooperatives and 16 460 growers.
- Blanc de blancs
- Blanc de Noirs
- Late-disgorged champagne
- Non-vintage
- Prestige cuvée champagne
- Rosé champagne
- Site-specific champagne
- Vintage champagne
Types of producers
Each bottle of champagne comes with initials in front of a code on the label. This code reveals if the wine has been produced by a house, a grower or a cooperative.
NM: Négociant manipulant
A producer who buys grapes, must or wine to make champagne on their own premises and market it under their own label. They may or may not own own vineyards. Most of the big brands are categorized as NM.
RM: Récoltant manipulant
A grower who makes and sells own-label Champagne exclusively from his or her own vineyards, processed on their own premises. An RM are allowed to by 5% of grapes from other growers. Many RMs also sell grapes to the NM.
CM: Coopérative de manipulation
A cooperative of growers who also make and sell Champagne under their own labels.
RC: Récoltant-coopérateur
A grower who sells a cooperative-produced champagne under their own name.
SR: Société de récoltants
A family firm of growers who share premises to make their Champagne from family vineyards under more than one brand.
ND: Négociant distributeur
Distributor who buys in ready bottles of Champagne and labels them in their own name.
MA: Marque d’acheteur
A brand name owned by a third party who is not the producer. It may for instance be a restaurant, supermarket or wine merchant.
Bottle sizes
| Name | Size | Bottles |
|---|---|---|
| Quarter bottle | 18.7cl | ¼ of bottle |
| Half bottle | 37.5cl | ½ of bottle |
| Bottle | 75cl | |
| Magnum | 150cl | 2 bottles |
| Jeroboam | 300cl | 4 bottles |
| Rehoboam | 450cl | 6 bottles |
| Methuselah | 600cl (6 liters) | 8 bottles |
| Salmanazar | 900cl (9 liters) | 12 bottles |
| Balthazar | 12 liters | 16 bottles |
| Nebuchadnezzar | 15 liters | 20 bottles |
| Salomon | 18 liters | 24 bottles |
| Primat | 27 liters | 36 bottles |
| Melchizedek | 30 liters | 40 bottles |
Sweetness
Sugar has many roles in champagne. It is mostly used to soften the high acidity of the wine. Simultaneously, it masks the subtlest aromas of the wine while also covering possible flaws. As a result of our warming climate and better winemaking technologies, much less sugar is needed to balance the wine. Many producers also seek to present their wines without any sugar. The pioneering house was Laurent-Perrier with its bone-dry, new-wave Ultra Brut champagne of the 1980s.
Sugar also has its own, albeit poorly understood, effect on the ageing process of champagne. Some typical characters in champagne certainly arise from the so-called the Maillard reaction. Bearing this in mind, it makes sense that completely unsweetened wine will probably develop differently than champagne with added sugar. Sugar is also a great conservative and anti-oxidant, hence the hyper-dry champagne movement comes with some risks.
- Brut Nature (or pas dosé, dosage zéro):
No added sugar, maximum
natural sugar content 3 g/l - Extra-brut: 0–6 g/l
- Brut: < 12 g/l
- Extra-dry: 12–17 g/l
- Sec: 17–32 g/l
- Demi-sec: 32–50 g/l
- Doux: > 50 g/l
Grapes of Champagne
One secret behind the complexity and balance of champagne is the practice of blending different grape varieties. Two of the most commonly used grapes are dark skinned, only one being white (or rather green), despite their juices being white.
- Pinot Noir is the most widely planted variety with its 38% share of the vineyards.
- Meunier covering 31% of the planting area.
- Chardonnay (the only white variety), is on the rise with a 30% share.
- Beside this trio, some people still cultivate rare historical varieties or new experimental varieties:
- Pinot Blanc (white)
- Pinot Gris (Pink)
- Arbane (white)
- Petit Meslier (white)
- Chardonnay Rose (Pink Chardonnay) officially authorised 2025
- Voltis officially authorised 2025
Champagne’s ancestral grape varieties represent a minuscule fraction – 0.4 per cent, to be precise – of plantations, but over the past 25 years their planting has grown by 45 hectares to a total of 136. Even if these varieties do not pose a threat to the ‘The Big Three’, they bring versatility to Champagne and another dimension to its story. And they may also have a say in combatting the effects of climate change.
Read Essi Avellan’s article about their revival from Club Oenologique’s Grower Champagne Report here.