Inside Northside Magazine's December/January 2005 Issue

Champagne's Secret Code

by Kristen Golden

Get out your magnifying glass if you want to get in on the latest Champagne craze for your holiday gift giving and entertaining. On the label of every bottle of Champagne—that’s sparkling wine from France’s Champagne region ONLY—there are two letters and six numbers that indicate the status of the producer and the brand owner, offering consumers a hint about the quality of the bottle’s contents.

Of the seven possible codes, most will be NM######. The six numbers identify that specific bottle, but the NM ranks the wine as from a Negociant-Manipulant, or dealer/producer. As an NM, the producer buys grapes from vineyards all around Champagne, an area of about 86,000 acres, and then creates and markets the wine under its own label. Most of the big, familiar Champagne houses, such as Moët & Chandon, Taittinger and Veuve Cliquot, fall into this category.

The specific location of the source vineyards is normally not the main focus in Champagne NMs, a sharp contrast to other French wine regions, where terroir dominates—the concept of flavor and character developing from the soil and climate in which the vines are grown. The earth is everything in France, except in Champagne, where blending is king. NM wines are well-known for being major blends, or cuvées, using grapes from several different varietals, regions and vintages. This often produces wonderfully delicious sparkling wines, including some of the most famous, such as Dom Perignon and Roederer’s Cristal.

Savvy wine buyers, however, often choose bottles that read RM######, although that code appears on only 1.9 percent of all Champagne imported into the United States. Recolant-Manipulants, or grower/producers, vinify, bottle and market Champagne from grapes they themselves grow.

Born from winemakers who tired of working for negotiants, these entrepreneurial houses bring the Champagne focus back to the concept of terroir. Often robust and drier than NM wines, RMs are made as still wines with bubbles, showcasing the highest attributes of the grape, be it pinot, pinot menuire or chardonnay—the three Champagne varieties. Terry Thiese, a leading importer of RM wines, suggests thinking of them as food wines, like a still Pinot Noir or Chardonnay. Some recommended RMs are: Pierre Gimonnet & Fils Brut, $46; Jean Lallement et Fils Brut, $44; Pierre Peters Blanc de Blancs, $39; and Aubry Brut Rose, $54.