Beginner’s guide: reading Champagne labels
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Understanding a champagne label can be somewhat mystifying. Wikimedia Commons
Guide to Champagne & Sparkling Feature Week
Understanding a champagne label can be somewhat mystifying to the uninitiated. Help is at hand! What follows is a glossary, a key to sweetness levels, and a list of producer types.
Glossary of terms found on Champagne labels
| Term | Definition |
| Blanc de blancs | a champagne made from white grapes, usually chardonnay but can also include pinot blanc, pinot gris, arbane or petit meslier. |
| Blanc de noirs | literally, white wine from black grapes. In Champagne, that means pinot noir and/or pinot meunier. As the colour is in the skins of coloured grapes, the fresh grapes are pressed quickly to minimise colour pick-up, resulting in a white wine. |
| Chef de Cave | the chief of the cellar, or chief winemaker. |
| Clos | a walled vineyard, eg, Clos des Goisses, Clos du Mesnil. |
| Coeur de Cuvée | ‘heart of the cuvée’, or the middle part of the pressing, which yields the finest juice. |
| Coteaux Champenois | a still wine of the Champagne region, usually red. |
| Crayères | deep underground chalk pits dug by the Romans, now used as cool maturation cellars for champagne. |
| Crémant | a term no longer used in Champagne but common in other parts of France to denote a sparkling wine with a lower than normal pressure (2-3 atmospheres)—so a less fizzy wine. |
| Cru | a vineyard, a village, or a classified ‘growth’. |
| Cuvée | 1) a blend of wines. 2) part of the brand-name of a blended wine, usually non-vintage, denoting a style. 3) the first (and best) flow of juice from a press-load of grapes. ‘Taille’ is the end of the pressing and the least-valued. |
| Disgorgement or Dégorgement | the process of removing the lees from the bottle to leave a clear wine ready for sale. |
| Grand Cru | the highest vineyard classification in Champagne. There are 17 of them. |
| Grande Marque | largely obsolete term for the big champagne brands, with no basis in law. |
| Lees | sediment. A combination of dead yeast cells, proteins, colour pigments and other unwanted things that settles to the bottom of a bottle after the secondary fermentation. |
| Liqueur d’Expedition or Dosage | the mixture of wine and sugar added to a champagne before the final cork is applied. |
| Liqueur de Tirage | the liquid (wine plus sugar or grape juice concentrate) added to the wine before bottling to provoke the secondary fermentation in the bottle. |
| Méthode Champenoise | same as méthode traditionnelle, but the term is now obsolete. |
| Méthode Traditionnelle | the official name for the traditional method of making champagne, where the secondary fermentation occurs on the same bottle that you buy. |
| Millesime | vintage. |
| Mousse | bubbles; effervescence. |
| Multi-Vintage | as for non-vintage. |
| Non-Vintage | a wine blended from more than one vintage. |
| Premier Cru | the second-highest classification of vineyards in Champagne. There are 41 of them. |
| Prestige Cuvée | a deluxe champagne that is the producer’s crowning achievement, and usually their most expensive. |
| Prise de Mousse | the second (in bottle) fermentation that creates the bubbles. |
| RD | récemment dégorgé, or recently disgorged. Denotes a wine given extra time on its yeast lees. Same as Late Disgorged. |
| Remuage or Riddling | the process of shaking the lees down into the neck of the bottle prior to disgorgement. Can be manual or mechanised. |
| Reserve Wine or Vin de Réserve | wine from previous vintages kept in reserve to blend into the youngest wines to give depth and complexity to non-vintage champagnes. |
| Réserve Perpetuelle | a modified solera system, in which wine from successive vintages is added to a single tank or barrel. |
| Rosé | champagne with a pink colour. It always includes some black grapes, and usually some chardonnay, of which it can often have a majority. |
| Saignée | a technique for making rosé in which the juice of red (‘black’) grapes is left in contact with the skins for a short time to pick up colour, then ‘bled’ off the skins and later fermented. |
| Solera | a system of fractional blending designed to create a reserve wine with depth and aged complexity. Young wine goes in at the top tier, aged wine is drawn out of the lowest tier. |
| Taille | the tail-end of the pressing, which yields inferior juice. |
| Tirage | the bottling of the still wine with sugar and yeast added to initiate the secondary fermentation. |
| Vendange | vintage or harvest. |
| Vielles Vignes | old vines. |
| Vin Clair | still wine that has undergone its primary fermentation but has yet to be bottled for its secondary fermentation. |
| Vintage | wine made entirely from one season’s grapes. |
Sweetness levels
NB: These numbers are for residual sugar (RS). Technically, this is different from dosage. Dosage is the sweetening that is added to a bottle with the topping-up wine after it’s been riddled and disgorged, and before the final cork goes in. But the wine in the bottle may contain some residual sugar left over from the secondary fermentation, which will add to the analysable residual sugar in the finished wine.
| Style | Dosage |
| Brut Zero, Brut Nature or Ultra Brut | 0 g/l dosage, but can contain up to 3 g/l residual sugar. Very dry. |
| Extra Brut | < 6 g/l residual sugar. Dry. |
| Brut | 6-12 g/l residual sugar. Near-dry. |
| Extra Dry / Extra Sec | 12-17 g/l RS. Off-dry. |
| Dry | 17-32 g/l RS. Not dry at all! |
| Demi-Sec | 33-50 g/l RS. Semi-sweet. |
| Doux | More than 50 g/l RS. Sweet. |
Types of Champagne producer
There are many ways a champagne wine might be produced. Some wineries buy grapes in and some don’t buy any, while most do both. The various producer types are declared on labels using a code.
| Producer | Definition |
| CM – cooperative | this producer is a cooperative making wine from its members’ grapes. |
| MA – marque d’acheteur | a buyer’s own brand. A label owned by a merchant or supermarket. |
| NM – negociant-manipulant | this producer buys grapes (or juice, or fermented wine) from growers and makes the wine from then on. It can also use own-grown fruit. |
| RC – récoltant-cooperateur | a grower selling wine under its own label which is made by the cooperative of which they’re a member. |
| RM – récoltant-manipulant | this producer grows its own grapes and makes its own wine from them, and does not usually buy any grapes in from other growers – although there is a 5% allowance for buying grapes. Colloquially, a ‘grower’ champagne. |