About

It's only X if it comes from the X region of France, otherwise it's just sparkling Y is a snowclone based on the geographical distinction between Champagne and other sparkling wines, deriving its humor from the pedantry of wine aficionados correcting those who don't distinguish between the two, as Champagnes are only associated with France's Champagne region. Memes can replace the 'champagne' and 'sparkling wine' (the original X and Y) with two humorously equivalent concepts. Here, the made-up French region, turns the correction into an absurd justification for why X and Y should be distinguished. For instance, "It's only a cliché if it comes from the Cliché region of France, otherwise it's just sparkling stereotype", where X is "Cliché" and Y is "stereotype".

Origin and precursors

Sparkling wine produced in the Champagne region of France is subject to production requirements governing the use of the region's name. This has led to a longstanding distinction.^[1] The distinction was also frequently used online as a form of pedantic correction, even seen in Reddit threads dating back to 2013-14. In September 2016, GBH published an explainer about Champagne which noted the geographical requirements governing the designation and contrasted Champagne with sparkling wines produced elsewhere.^[2]

On April 18th, 2017, Urban Dictionary^[3] user Gonzo Writer submitted a definition for "incorrection" containing a joke about correcting someone for referring to sparkling wine as Champagne. The example concludes by explaining that wine is only called Champagne if it comes from the Champagne region of France.

Similar jokes about the geographical distinction continued to circulate online. On December 23rd, 2018, Redditor Nazzum submitted a post to /r/todayilearned^[4] explaining the legal status of the term "Champagne" outside France. The post generated comments joking about the distinction between Champagne and sparkling wine.

Spread

One of the earliest documented examples of the generalized snowclone was posted to Twitter on December 13th, 2018. Twitter^[5] user @Reverend_Banjo tweeted:

It's actually only “Frankenstein” if it's created in the Frankenstein region of France. Otherwise, it's a sparkling monster.

The tweet replaced Champagne with "Frankenstein," the Champagne region with a fictional "Frankenstein region of France," and sparkling wine with "sparkling monster." In distinguishing between Frankenstein and "monster", the tweet set a structure that we'd see in later versions of the meme.

This example was later documented by Kiley Jolicoeur and Rachel Ivy Clarke in a 2021 paper that examined the meme's use in the context of knowledge organization. The authors identified the December 13th, 2018 tweet as the earliest known example of the format they had located.^[6]

The format began appearing with increasingly unrelated subjects in early 2019. On January 2nd, 2019, Twitter^[7] user @JoelOtter posted a variation involving "poetry" ("Poet region of France"), making a similar substitution along with some wordplay on wine ("sparkling whine"). In June 2019, a post on the /r/PhilosophyMemes^[8] subreddit adhered to the "in France" setup, while in July 2019 a variation was posted to /r/ProgrammerHumor^[9].

By January 2020, the format was sufficiently recognizable to be parodied self-referentially. A post on /r/wine^[10] used the construction to describe a "meme" as originating from the fictional "meme region of France" and otherwise being a "sparkling image macro."

The format continued to be used in 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. On March 17th, 2020, a post on /r/TrollXChromosomes^[11] used the phrase "sparkling isolation" in a variation about quarantine. The post received more than 5,000 upvotes. On March 28th, 2020, another variation posted to /r/nocontext^[12] applied the format to COVID-19 ("Corona region of France"/"sparkling flu").

Various Examples

The snowclone has been applied to a whole variety of subjects.

External References