What a Champagne label tells you.

Most people choose Champagne by the name on the front and never read the rest. The small print is more useful. It tells you how sweet the wine is, what kind of Champagne it is, who made it and, on some bottles, how long it has rested since it was finished. Here is the Champagne label explained line by line, with what to do with each answer.

You need no French and no textbook, only the habit of turning the bottle round.

Champagne label explained: what kind of wine it is

Non-vintage Champagne, the everyday bottle of most producers, is a blend of several years. Wine held back from earlier harvests lets a house make the same style every year, whatever the weather did. The rules require at least 15 months in the cellar before release, 12 of them on the lees, the spent yeast from the second fermentation in bottle. Good producers often go well beyond this minimum.

Vintage Champagne comes from a single year named on the label and must spend at least three years in the cellar before release. Producers usually make one only in years they judge worth singling out, so a vintage tells you something about the year as well as the house.

Prestige cuvée is the producer's own term for its top wine, usually a vintage from its best sites or its most rigorous selection. The term is not regulated, so the producer alone decides what earns the name.

Blanc de blancs, blanc de noirs and rosé

Three grapes make almost all Champagne: Chardonnay (white) and Pinot Noir and Meunier (both black). Blanc de blancs means made only from white grapes, which almost always means Chardonnay. Expect tension, citrus and a fine, taut texture. Blanc de noirs is a white wine made only from black grapes (Pinot Noir, Meunier or both). It is usually fuller, with more red fruit. Without either term, a Champagne is typically a blend of black and white grapes.

Rosé Champagne is usually made by blending a little red wine into white; a few are made by macerating black grapes briefly on their skins. The label rarely says which.

You may also see Grand Cru or Premier Cru. In Champagne these words describe whole villages, rated at the top of an old price scale, rather than individual vineyards as in Burgundy. They tell you where the grapes grew; how well the wine was made is up to the producer.

Dosage: how sweet the Champagne is

After the wine has aged on its lees, the yeast is removed and the bottle is topped up with the dosage, a little wine that usually has sugar dissolved in it. The sugar in the finished wine, in grams per litre, decides the sweetness term on the label. From driest to sweetest:

• Brut Nature. Less than 3 g/L, with no sugar added.
• Extra Brut. 0 to 6 g/L.
• Brut. Less than 12 g/L. The most familiar style.
• Extra Dry. 12 to 17 g/L.
• Sec. 17 to 32 g/L.
• Demi-Sec. 32 to 50 g/L.
• Doux. More than 50 g/L.

The bands overlap at the dry end, so a Brut Nature and an Extra Brut can taste almost the same. The words also mislead anyone who reads them at face value.

On a Champagne label, Extra Dry is sweeter than Brut and Sec is sweeter still.

How sweet a Champagne tastes depends on more than the number. Its high acidity makes a Brut taste dry to almost everyone. A very low dosage suits ripe, well-aged wine and can taste austere on a young, lean one. The sweeter styles have a place at the table: a Demi-Sec flatters a fruit dessert that would make a Brut taste thin.

Who made it: the two small letters

Somewhere in the small print you will find two capital letters before a registration number. They tell you what kind of business made the wine.

• NM, négociant-manipulant. A house that buys grapes, often in addition to its own vineyards, to make its wine. Most of the large brands.
• RM, récoltant-manipulant. A grower making wine from their own grapes. This is what people mean by grower Champagne.
• CM, coopérative de manipulation. A cooperative making wine from its members' grapes and selling it under its own brands.
• RC, récoltant-coopérateur. A grower selling, under their own label, wine made by their cooperative. It can look like grower Champagne without being made by the grower.
• SR, société de récoltants. A company formed by growers, often from one family, sharing a winery.
• ND, négociant-distributeur. A distributor selling wine made by someone else under its own name.
• MA, marque d'acheteur. A buyer's own brand, such as a retailer's or a restaurant's label.

The code says nothing about quality. There are superb houses and dull growers; the reverse is also true. It tells you who controlled the grapes and the winemaking, which is what you need to know when two bottles look alike on a shelf.

The disgorgement date and ageing Champagne

Disgorgement is the moment the yeast sediment is removed, the dosage added and the final cork put in. Some producers print the date, usually on the back label or through a code you can look up. It is the most useful optional line on the bottle.

It matters because Champagne keeps changing after disgorgement. Two bottles of the same non-vintage wine, bought from different shops, can be years apart in bottle age and taste noticeably different. A recent disgorgement shows more fresh fruit and a livelier mousse. With time, the wine softens and deepens: long ageing on the lees brings toast and brioche, while years in bottle after disgorgement add honey and nuts. Good non-vintage often improves with two or three extra years in your cellar.

Some producers hold back old vintages on their lees for many years and disgorge them shortly before release. These late-disgorged wines combine the depth of long ageing with the freshness of a recent disgorgement. Drink them soon after release, because once off their lees they age faster than a vintage disgorged at the usual time. For the longest keeping, buy magnums, which age more slowly and evenly. For more on what time does to a white wine, see white wines that age well.

Serving what you have read

Serve Champagne at 8 to 10°C: colder hides the flavour you paid for, warmer makes the mousse coarse. Wine serving temperatures explains how to get there without guesswork. Pour into a white wine glass rather than a narrow flute, since the wider bowl gives the aromas room; choosing wine glasses covers why. Match the label to the food as well. A blanc de blancs with raw fish is a classic; wine with sushi shows how well it works. An older vintage suits a slow dinner of several courses, the kind of evening our vintages dinners are built around.

Before you buy your next bottle, turn it round and check four things: the sweetness term, the style, the two letters and the disgorgement date if there is one. It takes thirty seconds and it is the difference between choosing a Champagne and guessing.