If you're purchasing a sparkling wine this holiday season, it's easy to keep it local. After all, some of the finest American choices are produced in our own backyard. Following is a list of my top-ten local sparkling wine choices. Half of these wineries are set in Carneros, an area that covers parts of both Sonoma and Napa Valley that is perfectly suited for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grape growing (the two varietals most commonly used for sparkling wines). The other half are located in other parts of Napa, Sonoma and the Anderson Valleys.

As you'll see, some of these wineries are large and well-known, while others may not be as familiar to you. While creating this list I tried to include a variety of vintners, from multi-nationally owned estates to smaller family-owned wineries. When the information was available, I've included Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast ratings, as well as any major prizes won. For comparison's sake, you'll also find the least expensive bottle from each vintner listed. These are officially priced between $20 - $30, but I've seen many in stores for around $15. Obviously more expensive varieties are also available if your budget allows.

So keep it festive and local this New Year's Eve, but most of all, stay safe.

Note: I'm avoiding using the term "champagne" as it's only allowed for French wines made in the Champagne region. All the wines below are produced in the same way that champagne is created -- by inducing the in-bottle secondary fermentation of the wine to effect carbonation.

Sonoma

Gloria Ferrer
Gloria Ferrer is a standard-bearer for California sparkling wines. According to Wine Spectator, “Gloria Ferrer reliably produces some of California's best sparkling wines.” I had some on Christmas day and can attest to its festiveness. The Sonoma Brut, which is dominated by Pinot Noir, has a 90 2009 Wine Spectator ranking and is priced around $20.

Domaine Carneros
Established in 1987 by Champagne Tattinger, Domaine Carneros is an organic certified winery. They focus on making three traditional styles of sparkling wine: Brut, Brut Rosé and Blanc de Blancs. With consistent rankings in the 90s from both Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast, Domaine Carneros provides reliably excellent sparkling wines. Their 2006 Brut Cuvée Sparkling Wine made from Pinot Noir and Chardonnay gets a 91 Wine Spectator ranking and costs $26 a bottle.

Iron Horse
A small family-owned winery, Iron Horse has been producing sparkling wines for over 30 years. Wine & Spirits Magazine named them Sparkling Winery of the Year nine times and their wines have been served in the White House since Reagan first had it served to Gorbachev. Their Classic Brut, which is 3/4 Pinot Noir and 1/4 Chardonnay, sells for a little over $30 a bottle with typical Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast ratings in the 90s.

J Vineyards & Winery
I like this winery for a few different reasons. The first (and biased) reason is that it is owned and run by a woman (Judy Jordan), which seems like a rarity in the wine industry. They are also dedicated to sustainable farming practices. And, because taste does matter, it's good to note their Brut Rose was the Sparkling Sweepstakes Winner at the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition earlier this year. Their J Cuvée 20 Brut NV sells for $20 a bottle.

Schug Carneros Estate
Founded in 1980, Schug is a family-owned winery. They are dedicated to sustainable winemaking practices, finding the most environmentally friendly and efficient way of growing the grapes, and creating habitats for various bird species (which I really love). Their Rouge de Noirs Sparkling Pinot is $30 a bottle.

Napa

Domaine Chandon
If you're looking for something distinctly French, Domaine Chandon is a great local choice. Founded in 1973 by Moët -– the champagne winery -– it was the first French-owned sparkling wine venture in the United States. Consistently ranked in the 90s by both Wine Enthusiast and Wine Spectator, Domaine Chandon provides a classic sparkling wine choice. The Brut Classic, which has a 90 point Wine Enthusiast 2009 ranking, is priced at about $20.

Mumm Napa
Located in Rutherford along the Silverado Trail in the Napa Valley, and started by the French G.H. Mumm company (one of the largest champagne producers in the world), Mumm Napa is one of the largest local sparkling wine producers. Their Brut Prestige, priced at about $20, ranks 89 for Wine Spectator and 90 for Wine Enthusiast.

Schramsberg Vineyards
Located in Calistoga, Schrambsberg Vineyards is the oldest sparkling wine vineyard in California and is also a certified Napa Green winery. Consistently ranking well for both Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast, Schrambsberg is a great local choice. A bottle of Mirabelle multi-vintage brut costs a bit over $20.

Anderson Valley

Scharffenberger Cellars
Scharffenberger Cellars is one of the largest sparkling wine producer in the Anderson Valley. With a history that includes being previously owned by John Scharffenberger of Scharffenberger chocolate fame. Scharffenberger Non Vintage Brut received a gold medal from the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition earlier this year. Their Brut is 2/3 Pinot Noir and 1/3 Chardonnay grapes and sells for just under $20 a bottle.

Roederer Estate
Set in the Anderson Valley, Roederer Estates is the California branch of the French company Champagne Louis Roederer, which has been making champagne for over 200 years. In 2009, Wine Spectator Magazine gave their Brut NV a Recommended – Top Wine ranking. It sells for about $20 a bottle.

Stephanie Miller, the assistant vineyard manager at Robert Sinskey Vineyards, pulled back the lid of a knee-high wooden bin and plunged her hand wrist-deep in a thick layer of squashed mulberry-colored grapes. Sweeping them back to reveal the bright purple juice below, she dipped in a glass and held out a taste. A little sweet, a little sharp, the cloudy juice was speckled with bits of grape and froth, buoyant and lively with yeasts and natural sugars.

A couple of years from now, this same stuff will be a suave Napa Valley Pinot Noir. But on this warm morning at the beginning of the 2009 harvest, these grapes are just a day or two off the vine, busily fermenting their way from juice to wine.

Surrounding these wooden bins are the hulking stainless-steel vats more typical of a modern winery, into which most of Sinskey's juice goes. But, as Miller explained, for this small pick, taken from one particular vineyard block that ripened early, letting the grapes ferment the old-fashioned way seemed just fine.

It fits right in with the style of the vineyard, a family-run place where sheep roam as four-footed weed whackers during the winter, munching down the weeds and cover crops before the fruit sets. Around the blocks of grapes are hedgerows and trees dotted with raptor perches and owl boxes, providing habitat for birds and beneficial insects. Hawks soar overhead, keeping hungry eyes on the mice and gophers below. Organic since 2001, the vineyards were certified biodynamic in 2007, following the methods laid out by Austrian philosopher/educator/polymath Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), under the down-to-earth eye of vineyard manager (and livestock wrangler) Debby Zygielbaum.

Sheep on the farm. Photo by Robert Sinskey

There are many layers to biodynamic farming, but the basic premise involves taking organics one step further to create a holistic, "closed circle" ecosystem whereby all the land's fertility needs can be met on site. Animals provide manure, for example, manure goes into compost, compost goes into soil that then grows grass to feed the animals.

Hence the sheep, and the on-site composting program that transforms a good portion of the winery's spent grape pomace into a rich organic soil booster. That's just the tip of Steiner's philosophy, however. As a philosopher with a mystical Christian bent, Steiner's agricultural experiments in the face of industrial, post-WWI devastation blended time-honored Northern European folk traditions (planting by the phases of the moon, assigning the calendar "root days" and "fruit days" based on planetary movements) with his own personal beliefs in astral energy planes and more.

Walking a path between the grapes, Miller quotes a friend and fellow biodynamic farmer as saying, "You can farm on your knees or on your feet." Meaning that you can follow Steiner's dictates as a spiritual practice or as a practical how-to; either way, the results speak for themselves. Do you have to believe that a cow's horn symbolizes a kind of bridge between the earth and the sun, and that adding manure aged for months inside a buried cow's horn to your compost will energize your plants?

Perhaps, perhaps not. But there's no denying that building an intimacy with every aspect of a piece of land, from the way the wind moves over it to what weeds grow there, builds an awareness that translates into deep knowledge, informed by care and maybe even love.

Grapes on the vine. Photo by Robert Sinskey

Hanging on the cusp of harvest, the grapes are vividly indigo, green-gold, rose amber or plum black. The land itself feels rich with life, from the bees darting in and out of the flowering weeds below to the birds pecking their portion of the harvest from the ends of the rows.

The Zinfandel grapes are almost comically huge, ripe-to-bursting clusters hanging blue-black in the hot early-autumn sunshine. The Pinot Noir berries are smaller and shyer, almost dainty, the Cabernet Sauvignon vines looking straight out of a Claude Chabrol film. Muscat, clear gold, is unmistakable, the juice sugar sweet with a hint of musk. I remember reading a description of a summer morning in Venice as having "light like pink grapes" and these clusters of rosy Pinot Gris turn the simile suddenly clear.

All well and good. But how do the wines taste? After visiting numerous blocks of Sinskey's grapes, growing in the Stag's Leap and Carneros appellations, Miller takes me back to the elegant public tasting room on the Silverado Trail. Here, too, the idea of a self-fufilling ecosystem continues.

Wine is, after all, meant to drunk with food. So there is a small but lovely open kitchen adjoining the tasting room, where house chef Alex Bolduc whips up small complementary palate-teasers to accompany the $20 tasting flights, using produce harvested in the surrounding kitchen garden. The winery also runs special culinary tours ($50 per person, by appointment), in which guests get a guided tour through both the caves and the gardens, followed by a wine, cheese, and charcuterie tasting. It helps, of course, that Sinskey's culinary director is his wife, Maria Helm Sinskey, well-known cookbook author and formerly the highly acclaimed chef of San Francisco's PlumpJack restaurant.

The open kitchen in the tasting room. Photo by Robert Sinskey

The day I visited, Bolduc was simmering a batch of pear butter on the stove, made with green pears harvested from the Sinskeys' backyard. Once finished, it would jarred and sold in the tasting room or used on the menu of one of the winery's popular wine-club dinners, held every few months. While wine-club members get first dibs at reservations, interested diners can always call to see if any seats are available. Upcoming dinners include a Fall Equinox Dinner on Sept. 19th, and a Harvest Dinner on Oct. 24th. The price for six courses accompanied by wine is $175 per person.

In the tasting room, I nibbled a bit of aged gouda dotted with homemade plum jam, alongside a buttery mini-quiche filled with tatsoi, roasted onions, and cream, a moist gougere and some delectable slivers of pizza hot from the wood-burning oven. (Pizza Thursdays, a new development, are not to be missed).

And then there were the wines. I've long been a fan of Sinskey's Vin Gris as a elegant summer cooler. But the pours were more autumnal that day, starting with the Vandal Vineyard Pinot Noir. This parcel gets temperatures some 10 to 15 degrees warmer, bringing out the juicy richness and depth of the fruit, with hints of leather and smoke. "It's a more masculine wine," suggests sales manager Meg Barkley, and I have to agree: it seems to call out for leg of lamb, deep leather armchairs, dark wood paneling and a roaring fire.

A Pinot Noir from the Three Amigos parcel, some 5 to 7 miles away, is quite different, leaner and lighter, with less smoke and more cherry. "This one's my duck wine," says Barkely.

Sinskey only recently started doing single-designation Pinots, and the choice of vineyards changes from year to year, depending on the quality of the fruit.

It's one more part of the winemaking philosophy espoused by owner Rob and his longtime vintner, Jeff Virdig, who has been working with Sinskey since 1991: bring the fruit to its peak, then get out of the way and let the grapes express their own truth.

For information and reservations for upcoming dinners, call 800.869.2030 or 707.944.9090, ext. 119.