These tend to be regions with very cool climates; they produce grapes that mature with low sugars and high acids — just what sparkling wine calls for.

Over the past decade, it has become apparent that five chief appellations in California produce fruit that makes superior sparkling wines. There’s the Anderson Valley in Mendocino County, Green Valley and Russian River Valley in Sonoma County; the Carneros region that straddles the south end of Sonoma and Napa counties; and some selected areas near the ocean along the state’s Central Coast.

Wines from these special regions have their own unique, regional characteristics, too. The sparkling wines of Mendocino, for example, taste different from the wines of Carneros. In addition to this, there is the house style, different for each winery, that may render those unique fruit flavors in ways that range from light and lively to rich and ponderous.

While finding the perfect climatic region for the vines is probably paramount, the quality of California sparkling wine has been getting better for other reasons, too — a trend especially noticeable in recent releases.

First, growers and winemakers are selecting the best clones from the dozens and dozens available for chardonnay and pinot noir — the two basic varietals in California sparkling wine — and they’re grafting these clones to the right rootstocks.

Second, they are identifying those soils and sites within these cool appellations — right down to ridges, hillsides and even certain rows of vines — that yield wines of the very highest quality.

Third, as each year passes, the vines are a year older, and with vine age comes character.

And fourth, over the years, the growers and winemakers have been discovering techniques in the vineyard that improve the fruit, as well as in the winery that enhance the wines. All of this is a boon for consumers, as the best California sparkling wines are getting even better.

To learn more, we’ll visit with some of the most outstanding sparkling wineries in these favored regions, starting with the most northerly and working our way south.

Anderson Valley

The Anderson Valley is a long, beautiful rift in the mountains of Mendocino County. It runs from southeast to northwest, where it ends among the redwoods that flank the Pacific’s cold waters. Through the gap where the Navarro River empties into the sea, cool air and overnight fog flows inland to cool vines planted on the valley bottom’s low, rolling hills.

Just far enough inland to be protected from the strongest ocean winds and constant summer fog is the small village of Philo, where two of the finest sparkling wineries in California are located.

Scharffenberger Cellars occupies a gorgeous piece of land here, with many acres of open meadows dotted with stands of redwoods. It once was a working ranch. I walked the property with John Scharffenberger nearly a decade ago when it was still cluttered with rusting farm equipment, yet he saw the potential.

Today, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the French conglomerate that now owns the winery, has turned the property’s potential into 58 acres of vines. Next year, 20 more acres will be coming on line. "We’re making 37,000 cases of wine per year now," Winemaker Tex Sawyer says, "although this year we harvested enough fruit to make 57,000 cases."

Sawyer says that the area around Philo has two advantages. "First, this is the coldest growing climate in California. Our annual average temperature here is 56 degrees Fahrenheit, comparable to Champagne at 53 degrees Fahrenheit. Second, we’re ten degrees lower in latitude here than in Champagne, so we get much more sunlight. This means that even though temperatures are cool, our grapes ripen consistently. In Champagne, they keep their fingers crossed hoping to reach eleven percent alcohol, but we get it every year."

Champagne’s cold climate means high levels of total acidity and low pHs, which French winemakers soften by putting their base wines through a malolactic fermentation. "The use of malolactic fermentation in sparkling wines is relatively rare in California," Sawyer says. "Here in the cool Anderson Valley, however, our pHs are usually under 3.0 and our acidity is 1.2 to 1.5 at harvest, so I do 100 percent malolactic fermentation on our fruit, which rounds and softens the finished wines. It adds cream and vanilla notes to the flavors.

"Another thing that malolactic fermentation does," Sawyer adds, "is to extend the length of the flavor experience, so you get fruit throughout instead of just a burst of fruit at entry."

What fruit flavors are characteristic of the Anderson Valley? According to Sawyer, "Chardonnays from here show lemon and floral character with some ripe green apple and a little pear. Pinot noir at picking tastes like black cherries and plums, but when blended with chardonnay in the final cuvées, is more strawberry and red raspberry in character.

"I let the Anderson Valley express itself," he says, describing the Scharffenberger house style. "I aim for fresh, perfumy, aromatic characteristics with some fresh-baked bread scents that age to a toast aroma."

Borrowing from the French habit of describing wines in terms of their feminine charms, he says, "Our wines are like an athletic woman in her prime — fit and well-muscled, yet supple and approachable."

Besides a non-vintage brut and rosé, Scharffenberger produces a popular blanc de blancs, a non-vintage crémant (a sparkling wine made with less pressure in a sweeter style), and a small amount of vintage brut.

Roederer Estate, the American venture of Champagne Louis Roederer, is perched on a gentle slope just north of Highway 128 in Philo. Winemaker Michel Salgues reports the same kind of low pHs and crisp acidity as Sawyer, but he’s not as dedicated to malolactic fermentations.

"I’ve used 10 to 20 percent malolactic in my blends the past three years," Salgues says, "but I put wines through malolactic only if I feel they need it."

All of Roederer Estate’s fruit comes from the 350 acres that surround the winery, which are planted to two-thirds chardonnay and one-third pinot noir — about the proportion used in the brut blend. The rising star of the house, though, is L’Ermitage. "This is made with the same concept as tête de cuvée in France. It’s the best we can do," Salgues says. "I choose about five percent of our best wines — the ones that have more length, structure and puissance, more complexity. They spend more time on the yeast (the current release is 1991) and thus have more yeast autolysis flavors." (Yeast autolysis flavors develop during the time the wines are resting on their sides after the secondary fermentation in the bottles. The spent yeast pools on the bottom and many of the cells disintegrate, releasing rich, caramel-like flavors into the wines.)

Salgues characterizes the fruit flavors of Anderson Valley sparklers as "primarily citrus." He makes about 51,000 cases of non-vintage (he calls it multi-vintage) brut, plus a few thousand cases of rosé and about 3,000 to 4,000 cases of L’Ermitage.

Green Valley

Green Valley, the site of Iron Horse Vineyards, is a small appellation of steep hills west of Highway 116 between Forestville and Guerneville in Sonoma County. Cold air from the nearby ocean washes over this region almost daily, yet middays can be warm. The soils are usually Goldridge loam — a deep, soft, sandy, well-drained, low-fertility loam that produces marvelous wines. (Among other renowned still wines, Kistler ‘Vine Hill’ Chardonnay and Joseph Swan and Dehlinger Pinot Noirs are grown on Goldridge loam.)

Iron Horse Winemaker Forrest Tancer says the cool climate "gives both pinot noir and chardonnay a cinnamon-spicy quality that develops with age." He says that in Green Valley, fruit for sparkling wines takes 110 to 115 days from flowering until harvest —

a very long hang-time that contrasts with 65 to 70 days in warm areas like the Alexander Valley in northeast Sonoma County, where Tancer also has property.

Ordinarily, in warmer regions, fruit that hangs on the vine for 110 days will have very high sugars and low acids, rendering it unfit for sparkling wine, which needs low sugars and bright, crisp acid structure. But Green Valley is so cool, Tancer says, that the acids stay high and firm.

"The extra-long time on the vine produces two quality points," he says.

"First, the fruit not only gets ripe, it reaches maturity. With mature — as opposed to simply ripe — fruit, the amount of harsh malic acid is lower. When the sugars stay low, you can let the fruit hang until it reaches the point of maturity, resulting in 70 percent tartaric and only 30 percent malic." This means the wine will not have to undergo a malolactic fermentation because its acids are naturally balanced. "Balance is the secret," Tancer says.

But there’s a wrinkle. Since malolactic fermentation adds some complexity to sparkling wine, you need to age non-malolactic wines longer for extra complexity. That’s just what Tancer is doing at Iron Horse, which ages its regular bruts longer than most houses, and has a full-blown program of late-disgorged (LD) wines. These LD wines sit on the yeast for many years. The current LD cuvée is from the 1990 vintage.

"The second advantage," Tancer says, "which can be attributed to our fruit reaching full maturity, is the potential we have for making wines of great depth of flavor on the mid-palate that isn’t attained in Champagne. California sparklers are gaining a vibrancy of bright, complex, but not tart, fruit. Mature Green Valley pinot noir has soft, round, berry-like fruit. It’s not as dark as black cherry, but it’s darker than strawberry. And our chardonnay has a sweet, rather than tart, lemon quality."

Tancer admits that matching the quality levels for sparkling wine that have been achieved in California with Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay has been more of a challenge. "It’s more like what’s been happening with Pinot Noir," he says, referring to the long struggle to produce noteworthy California Pinots. (Sonoma’s Russian River Valley Pinots are now being favorably compared with the best Burgundies.)

"Still," he says, "by the year 2000, consumers will be seeing our best wines ever."

Russian River Valley

The Russian River Valley appellation runs from its warm end, near Healdsburg, south toward Forestville and Green Valley, then makes a sharp turn westward and heads toward the ocean, where the river eventually enters the sea at Jenner. The cool winds and fog that create the climate necessary for fine sparkling wine come through the estuary at Jenner and up through the cleft in the hills formed by the river into the wine-growing region that bears the Russian River Valley appellation.

Fine sparkling wine here means J, the label that was originally spun off from the Jordan Wine Company, but is now a separate entity.

"The current vintage is 100 percent Russian River Valley," says J Winemaker Oded Shakked. "In years past, we were getting some pinot noir from the Alexander Valley, but it ripened too fast. We’re getting two weeks more hang-time along the Russian River than in Alexander Valley."

Shakked is learning more and more about how pinot noir and chardonnay express themselves in selected vineyards with their differing microclimates along Westside and Eastside roads (the roads that flank the river) — both on the bottomlands and the hills that roll away on either side.

"In Champagne, the grapes can hang for a long time and only reach 16 brix, yet have more texture and structural balance than California fruit at 18 brix," Shakked says. "To get comparable elegance and complexity, we have to let our fruit hang until it reaches about 19.5 brix for the pinot noir and 20 brix for the chardonnay. Acids are a little softer than in Champagne, but the fruit is more intense and mature.

"Because it’s cool and the hang time is long, Russian River Valley pinot noir has time to develop layers of complexity. I find violets, bright, red fruits and a little Asian pear. We don’t get the strawberry that they do in Carneros, but we do get some black cherry and cola flavors," Shakked says.

"Our chardonnay always has a base of apples,

but I look for more nuance — something beyond the Granny Smith- and Golden Delicious-type flavors. I’m finding some vineyards whose chardonnay has layers of guava, cantaloupe, honeydew and pear."

To achieve nuance and use it in blending the base wines for J’s sparklers, he vinifies 23 different clone-rootstock combinations from the river valley and keeps them all in separate tanks until the final assemblage.

J’s current production of sparkling wine is now about 25,000 cases per year with the potential for further expansion due to the fact that J recently purchased Piper Sonoma’s facilities and vineyards.

Carneros

The Carneros appellation is a large, sprawling region of rolling hills along the northern border of San Pablo Bay. It includes the southernmost parts of Sonoma and Napa counties. Because of its situation along the border of a cold bay, Carneros is subject to strong afternoon winds and very cool temperatures. In addition, much of the soil in Carneros is ancient bay bottom overlaid with a shallow layer of topsoil. This means the vines aren’t able to sink their roots deeply, which keeps vigor and yields down and elevates quality.

At Domaine Carneros, Winemaker Eileen Crane is building complexity in her wines by selecting the very best clones and finding the right sites for them. She gladly attributes her inspiration for this approach to Francis Mahoney of Carneros Creek Winery, who has conducted 14 years of pioneering clonal research and was the first California vintner to donate land to UC-Davis to conduct research on improving the quality of a grape varietal — in this case, pinot noir.

"In my years making wine here," Crane says, "every so often I came across a vineyard that, despite what appeared to be a poor location, produced outstanding fruit. It became obvious that it was a clonal thing. As Domaine Carneros has developed new vineyards, I’ve talked a lot to Francis Mahoney about which clones to site there.

"Francis was the granddaddy of clonal research and everyone in the Carneros Quality Alliance (a group of wineries dedicated to improving the wines of Carneros) has benefitted by going to him for cuttings."

When sparkling wine was first made in Carneros, Crane says, the wines showed tons of fruit but lacked real body and finish. It’s been the selection of outstanding clones over the years that has led to the current Carneros style, which she characterizes as one of "elegance and subtlety — of delicacy plus a fullness of fruit in the mouth. Different clones," she adds, "fill in any gaps. The Smith-Madrone clone, for instance, has dark red to black fruit flavors, such as cassis. The Madonna clone shows bright, red fruit, while UCD 15 gives rose petal and orange peel."

With chardonnay, clonal selections do the same thing, she says. "Some clones have tropical fruit, some muscat, some mixed fruits."

Crane is looking beyond chardonnay and pinot noir, too. "I’m a proponent of pinot blanc grown in Carneros. I use 5 percent or so in my wines. It hits a place on the palate that chardonnay doesn’t reach."

She agrees that the cool temperatures and shallow soils add their beneficial effects. "The Carneros soils are so poor that yields are low, which makes the fruit more concentrated,"Crane says.

Clones are also foremost on the mind of Todd Graff, winemaker at Codorniu Napa. Its 170 acres of estate vineyards were planted to single clones of pinot noir and chardonnay about six to eight years ago. "Now, we’re improving clonal diversity by T-budding many of these vines to varying clones. Pinot noir, for instance, is being budded over to what are called the Champagne and Dijon clones, while the same kind of diversification is going on with chardonnay. All this will lead to improved quality," Graff says.

Codorniu Napa also buys grapes from growers elsewhere in Carneros, some of which are from vineyards in the cooler parts of the lower Napa Valley around Yountville. "We are in the ongoing process of identifying vineyards that produce the best wines," he says.

Graff characterizes the fruit flavors of his estate chardonnay as "more citrus than green apple," and the pinot noir as "bright, red fruits such as strawberry, watermelon and cherry."

He says that "the depth of Carneros fruit enables you to add levels of winemaking without losing the fruit — techniques like barrel fermentation of chardonnay." Graff ferments about 20 percent of his chardonnay in the barrel. "Allowing the base wines to have sur lies contact in the barrels is another level of winemaking," he adds, "and for the first year, I’m doing malolactic fermentation on about 20 percent of my wines."

Manipulating the wine in the cellar can add complexity, but it also can reduce the fruit flavors. Not so with Carneros fruit, Graff says. "We start with such intense flavors that these techniques don’t detract from the fruit."

At Domaine Chandon, Winemaker Dawnine Dyer employs 100 percent Carneros pinot noir in her blanc de noirs because she is convinced it makes the highest quality wine. Other wines from this house, however, are blends of fruit from different regions.

"There’s a flip side to maintaining strong regional character in wines," Dyer says. "There are those who would say that having a range of flavors from different regions helps in blending the best possible wines. That’s what we do with our brut and reserve sparkling wines," she says. "For those wines, we get fruit from the south end of the Napa Valley, from Carneros, from Mt. Veeder for chardonnay, plus some from vineyards near Petaluma and some Russian River Valley fruit. Blending these together makes for a greater complexity."

Some of her wines, however, do show strong regional characteristics. She cites Domaine Chandon’s étoile, made primarily from Mt. Veeder chardonnay, as an example.

Gloria Ferrer also produces wines from Carneros fruit. Long aging is one way this winery builds greater quality into its sparklers. Its current 1989 Royal Cuvée, for instance, is chock-full of the classic, toasty flavors of aged sparkling wine.

Central Coast

Although the Pacific Ocean water slowly warms up as one heads south, it’s still sufficiently cool on the Central Coast to provide excellent conditions for sparkling wine grapes, if the vineyard is situated close to the ocean or within reach of the cool air that comes through gaps in the hills, such as the Edna Valley or farther north near Monterey.

It’s one of California’s mysteries why the cool regions around Monterey and Carmel aren’t growing more sparkling wine grapes. But viticulture in California is still on a learning curve, and perhaps the future may see some development of sparkling wines in these areas.

At Pismo Beach, vines for sparkling wine are planted less than three miles from the ocean because the climate heats up fast farther inland. The soils here vary greatly because of what soil scientists call the San Luis Obispo Formation — some are light in color, others are brownish clay, some are pebbly soils, others have three or four feet of topsoil, some are powdery and others are thick clay. Such a range of soils will produce varying flavors in the grapes grown on them, a quality point not lost on Laetitia Winemaker Christian Roguenant.

Roguenant was formerly the winemaker at Maison Deutz, but that label has been retired by its French owners, and the last of its inventory is being sold. It has been replaced by Laetitia, a consortium formed by three wineries and a private investor.

The partners are Beringer, Deutz, Roederer and a private investor, J.C. Tardivat, after whose daughter the winery is named. The label was launched in July using the old Maison Deutz facility and fruit from the estate’s 200 acres of vines.

Like Eileen Crane at Domaine Carneros, Roguenant believes in pinot blanc. Of the 200 acres of vines, which are spotted in three locations over the estate’s 900 acres, 75 are planted to pinot noir, 75 to chardonnay and 50 to pinot blanc. Laetitia’s wine portfolio includes still Pinot Noirs, Chardonnays and Pinot Blancs, plus four sparkling wines.

"Ours is one of the coolest vineyards in California," Roguenant says, echoing what I heard from winemakers in all the other top-quality appellations. "We get early bud break, but a very long growing season. I pressed my pinot blanc, for instance, on October 22 this year." He says lots of wineries in the Napa Valley buy fruit from this region. "It’s cheaper than Napa fruit," Roguenant explains, "and adding some to the cuvée only adds complexity."

He finds that his Central Coast chardonnay "is very unique with a strong, lemon-citrusy character. This citrus character is so strong that we let the chardonnay get riper than usual — to about 20.5 brix — to allow the acids to soften so the flavor isn’t so lemony-tart.

"The pinot blanc is rounder with higher pHs than the chardonnays. It gives honeydew melon flavors. I pick it early at 17.5 brix to preserve its freshness and acidity. The pinot noir is picked at about 19.5 brix. It’s typical California pinot with bright red fruit and candy flavors."

There is currently no national distribution of Laetitia’s sparklers, but by the end of the year its 1992 Elégance and 1993 Rosé Elégance should be available nationally at retail shops. The non-vintage Brut Select and the Crémant de Noirs are available only at the winery.

Roguenant says the sparkling wine business continues to be a struggle, despite the ever-increasing quality of the wines from California’s best regions. He’s optimistic, though. "The 1997 harvest will be the wines for the year 2000," he says. "I know we will sell a lot of wine for that celebration!"

Contributing Editor Jeff Cox is the author of From Vines to Wines and writes on wine for numerous publications, including The San Francisco Chronicle. He is also the host of "Your Organic Garden," a nationally televised series on PBS.