From Pops: Why the Little Wins Matter

When you think of champagne, you probably picture elegance. Crystal glasses. Golden bubbles. Maybe a celebration. What you might not picture is a vineyard worker checking soil cover crops, solar panels on a press house roof, or a grower tracking carbon emissions from each tractor pass. But that’s champagne too. Or at least, it is now.

Champagne is often a blend, and not just of vintages, vineyards, or producers. It’s usually a blend of grapes. Chardonnay , pinot noir , and meunier are the three primary varieties behind nearly every bottle. Not always, though. Some champagnes, called blanc de blancs or blanc de noirs, rely on just one or two. These single-varietal wines reveal the unique personality of each grape, unblended and uncompromised. But whether solo or in harmony, these three grapes are the building blocks of champagne’s character.

Most people don’t realize this, but not all champagne is made the same way—or by the same kind of people. Wtalk into almost any wine store, and you’ll see the big names: Veuve Clicquot, Moët & Chandon, Dom Pérignon. They’re familiar. Often beautifully packaged. And widely available. These are the large houses, officially known as Négociant Manipulant , or NM. Then there’s a quieter category of producers—growers who farm their own grapes and make the wine themselves. These bottles often have names you’ve never heard of. Maybe a plain label. Maybe a hand-written vintage. These are Récoltant Manipulant , or RM. And in many cases, they’re joined by small Coopérative Manipulant producers—co-ops run by groups of growers who work collectively but still keep quality and identity front and center. Together, these are the people crafting wine from their own land. They’re not chasing global brand recognition. They’re trying to express something real. So what’s the difference? Let’s start with scale. NM producers source grapes from hundreds, sometimes thousands, of different vineyards across the Champagne region. They buy fruit. They blend across villages. And they make wine in quantities that can reach into the tens of millions of bottles per year. Think of it like a luxury factory. Efficient. Engineered for consistency. Moët makes more bottles in a single year than all RM producers combined. RM and small CM producers operate on a whole different level. They farm the grapes. They know the vines. They make the wine themselves, or work with neighbors who do. It’s hands-on, deeply personal, and often passed down through generations. Some produce just a few thousand bottles a year. That alone doesn’t make the wine better or worse. But it does make it different. Here’s what changes: