Cracking the L'artisan Date Code?

While making up some decants, I glanced at the bottoms of my L'artisan bottles the other day and wondered if there weren't a pattern in the codes. I have a lot more experience with fashion/clothes, bags, and such, and so have gotten used to checking the various dating methods used by manufacturers (for example, Louis Vuitton uses a standard date coding for its items, as do many other high-end makers).

Well, on my L'artisan bottles, I noticed the following codes printed on the bottom of the bottle:
Dzongkha: DZ26Z
Patchouli Patch: PP23N
L'eau de L'artisan: AR23S
Timbuktu: TK24A
L'eau d'ambre:EA24E
...and so forth. These codes are ALSO printed on the bottom of the boxes, next to the barcode.

Given that Dzongkha came out in 2006, and I bought my bottles after 2004, I'm wondering if the numbers after the letters don't connote the year of bottling (like 26=2006, 24=2004, and so forth)? It certainly isn't the year of release, since L'eau d'ambre was one of the early L'artisan offerings.

Anyway, just curious if anybody else had any insights. As with date codes on fashion items, this might be a good way of telling if a deal is "too good to be true" or if we're just getting 12 year old stock.

The best way to test this is if anybody has some older bottles. For example, if someone bought l'eau d'ambre in 1998, maybe it would say EA18E (I have no idea what the last letter means). I wonder if the final letter might not be either a specific time, or location of bottling (again, with LV, part of the code registers the factory where the bag was made).

Anyway... just a thought...

That's a good idea, but I'd say that they probably won't tell (as you mentioned). Same with LV, Prada, or Gucci, even though the date codings aren't rocket science, they often act as though it is a great internal company secret. I think that often they don't want customers knowing very much about the product, so that if they have issues/questions about it they have to go back to the store. Once there, the opportunity for them to buy something else is much greater.

Then, I wonder if the second number after the letters might be the year, but not the first? That would make sense for your bottles and mine; so then perhaps that your VdR was bottled in 2005 and your Vetiver in 2004? So then the "1" would mean something else, I suppose...

The final letter has me stumped totally. I wondered at first if perhaps it might be a month or something, but there are no months in French or English that have "z" in them (as in my Dzongkha code). So, perhaps it specifies a location.

Again, I'm just tossing out ideas...

Zeram and Simisker,

Thanks for the additions; those both sound like VERY plausible possibilities.

I hope that some others with older L'artisans will read this thread and post their numbers... I'm sure between the group of us L'artisan fans, we can figure this out!

Just thought I'd bump this one up, since so far no vintage L'artisan holders have posted.