Marketing pro Liz Dodder gets a sparkle in her eye when she talks about the Central California wineries that make bubbly.  “Bubbles are my favorite,” she says with enthusiasm, “and I was always keeping a personal list of who was making it.”  That led her, in 2014, to produce a Central Coast sparkling wine map for her popular blog, Cali Coast Wine Country.  There were 45 stops on that map, already a testament to a burgeoning industry.

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.