Champagne codes

John This is an obscure tip for you, connoisseurs of champagne. A lot of people don’t know this.

Adam Oh, I love champagne. I love the bubbly, man. I love the bubbly.

John On every bottle of champagne, there’s a code, two-letter code that tells you what kind of champagne it really is. And it appears usually at the very bottom of the label. And it’s like two-point type. And it consists of two letters, usually a number and then some name. Anything can follow that. But these two letters are the important part. And these two letters are, for example, there’s a bunch of them. I think there’s eight different ones that are possible. There’s only two or three that are important to know. Because everyone’s talking about it, maybe this is the tip of the day really: grower’s champagne.

Adam Oh.

John Grower’s champagne is always touted as, ugh, you know. Grower’s champagne is the champagne made by the grower who grew the grapes makes the wine.

Adam Yes.

John This is not usual. Most champagnes are made by a large manufacturing company like Bollinger. And they buy, they have these contracts with all these growers. And they get all the champagne grapes in. They have a superstar winemaker. And they make a really good product. It should always cost more for that wine than it does for the grower’s champagne. Grower’s champagne should be cheaper.

Adam Oh, I always thought the grower’s champagne was more exclusive.

John It’s more exclusive in smaller quantities. But it should be cheaper. And anyone who’s marking, but some of these guys, these importers will mark it up. But grower’s champagne is generally cheaper and should be. And here’s how you can tell. But the little two letters at the bottom of the champagne bottle, you’ll see, it’s either going to say N.M. or R.M. This is two letters. And the N.M. means the negotiant manipulant. That means the guy who bought the grapes and made the wine. R.M. is a recoltant manipulant. And that’s the guy who harvested, recoltant, that means the harvester. So he grew the grapes. So you look for R.M. You see R.M. at the bottom. That means it’s a grower’s champagne, which is everyone touts. “Oh, grower’s champagne!”.

Adam Well, now I’m confused.

John It’s hard to be as good as Bollinger, but some of them, the chief, they have different flavor. They’re just slightly, they’re more authentic. Let’s put it that way.

Adam Okay. So now I have a question. So just just to reiterate: R.M. is the grower’s champagne. Right.

John Recoltant manipulant. Yes.

Adam So what I’d like to do is say, “you know, this has R.M. on it. This is a grower’s champagne.”

John Yeah, you could do that.

Adam This is the source of the Bollinger. This is right from the guy’s hands.

John Bollinger is never going to be a grower’s champagne. Bollinger is N.M.

Adam I said, this is the source.

John Oh, yeah. You could say that.

Adam “The guy’s wife stomped the grapes with his bare feet. You’re going to love this champagne.”

John You could do that. Yeah. If you were a sommelier and wanted to bullshit somebody.

Adam Yeah, I’m a B.S. I’m a bullshit sommelier.

John Now, the other just just for the record, there’s a there’s a six other designations. And one if you get it contains the letter C, there’s C.M. And R.C. C means it’s a co-op wine.

Adam Oh, this is like cheap jack.

John No, see, the thing is about co-op wines in France. They’re usually really good. They have a really good wine. You just don’t like co-op stuff here in the United States. French are very dedicated. It’s a communist country.

And they love the co-op stuff. And so they make a co-op wine with different labels on it. And they put, you know, it could be anybody’s product. So they look for the co-op ones. Those are usually really cheap. And then there’s one you should look for, which is a like if you bought a Costco says Costco Kirkland champagne, it probably have the letters M.A., which means it’s just a it’s marketing. It’s not there or anything. Who knows?

Adam They just put their label on it. It’s just a white label.

John White label. Yeah. And it means mark the mark of mark of the sales company. So it’s a sales price is champagne marketed by a third party. Now you look up champagne codes in Google and you’ll get the whole list and you can see what you’re doing. So you can have some knowledge. This is the only area in France that does this little code. And it’s very valuable.

Adam And can you just tell us what code you think is the best?

John Well, I like the the grower champagnes. So I would go with the R.M. because it’s cheaper, generally cheaper. I mean, you can get the superstar products are usually very expensive. But R.M. should be cheaper. I’ve seen them as cheap. You can get 30 dollars champagne with R.M. as you get to go to the right vendor.

Code	Meaning	Description
NM	Négociant-Manipulant	A company or individual trading exclusively as a Champagne House, relying on grape growers for most of their production.
RM	Récoltant-Manipulant	Grower Champagne: producers who make and market Champagne exclusively from their own grapes (up to 5% purchased grapes allowed).
RC	Récoltant-Coopérateur	Individuals who market wine produced by a cooperative but sold under their own label.
SR	Sociéte de Récoltants	A group of growers working together (not a cooperative). They may use cooperative facilities when needed.
CM	Coopérative de Manipulation	A grower-owned cooperative producing Champagne from combined harvests, either under the co-op label or member labels.
MA	Marque Auxilaire / Marque d’Acheteur / Marque Autorisée	A third-party brand owner (e.g., restaurant or merchant) not involved in production. Champagne may be sourced from NM, RM, or CM.
ND	Négociant-Distributeur	Companies or individuals who buy finished Champagne bottles, relabel them, and sell them under their own name.