In Santa Barbara County -- where pinot and chardonnay, Champagne's main ingredients, flourish -- many of the top tier producers sell their bubbles from about $20 to $50 a bottle, with a few commanding prices above $60.  Many of them, like Lucas & Lewellen, produce the still wine locally and then truck the juice to an outside facility – a place called Rack & Riddle in Napa, mostly – to be further fermented into bubbly.  But a growing number, including Flying Goat Cellars and Fess Parker Winery, produce their sparklers entirely in-house, emulating Champagne’s classic methode tradit

Not too long ago, a tasting like this would have been impossible. When Flying Goat Cellars' Norm Yost launched his sparkling wine program in 2005, he was pretty much on his own. Other labels had dabbled in bubbles in the past, like Brewer-Clifton and Whitcraft. But sparklers made yearly from Santa Barbara County grapes was brand new territory.

Today, the number of local producers with a regular sparkling wine program approaches 40.

And, this year alone marks the first-ever releases of bubbles by several labels, like Alma Rosa and Potek. So the time seemed right to pick a random sampling and taste some of Santa Barbara's effervescence at its best.