Love that this old thread has come back to life as you learn something new everyday. I was always under the impression that MA stood for Marque d’Acheteur and only Marque d’Acheteur. In the past I had heard references to Marque Auxiliaire and thought that someone was just confused. Turns out I was wrong and, not only that, but the regulation actually states that MA can stand for three things:
- Marque Auxiliaire - Secondary Brand
- Marque d’Acheteur - Buyer’s Brand
- Marque Autorisée - Authorized Brand
I don’t know exactly why MA stands for three things that essentially mean the same thing. It is almost like a group sat around and had a contest to come up with this. IMO, Marque d’Acheteur is the most literal interpretation of what MA means as it is usually a wine sold under a brand created by a specific non-Champagne company that wants to buy finished/bottled Champagne and sell it under this brand. This doesn’t mean that they can’t or don’t have input on the winegrowing/winemaking, but they don’t produce the wine and don’t have their own ‘Champagne company’. With some of the newer MA brands, the ‘buyer’ does have some input into the final product, but that used to almost never be the case. If a Champagne producer/company wanted to create an MA, they would not be allowed (though there are some backwards loopholes that allow it). They would be an ND instead which is a Négociant Distributeur. This allows the producer/company to buy finished and bottled wine from someone else and sell it under their label/brand.
Where things can get confusing is with a wine like Paul Bara’s Comtesse Marie de France which represents the backwards loophole of a Champagne producer having an MA in their stable. This wine was initially created as an MA for a separate company, but things didn’t work out and Paul Bara took the wine back over. With the brand already registered as an MA by someone else, they couldn’t make the brand part of their RM stable and, for whatever reason, that still holds true almost fifty years later. Today it still exits as an MA even though it is a true grower wine and part of the Paul Bara lineup… because that is how French law works.
As to the Liquid Farm Champagne, I can’t wait to hear what it is like because I am fan of Pertois-Moriset and this wine is different/unique from what Pertrois-Moriset currently has in their range.
