So What Is Champagne, Anyway?

All Champagne is sparkling wine but is all sparkling wine champagne? This question gets asked by a lot of people new to wine and many don't get the right answer. To put it simply, champagne is a sparkling wine that is made in the Champagne region of France. Anything that tastes like it, looks like it and/or smells like it that is made elsewhere . . . well, that's just sparkling wine.

It's sort of like how tissue paper gets referred to as Kleenex most of the time, even though Kleenex is actually a brand of tissue paper, and not a substitute for the word. Sparkling wine from Champagne is pretty much universally accepted as the best you can buy. That being said, it's also wildly popular. Thus, many, many, many people refer to all sparkling wines by the region, even when they're not using the name correctly.