Eight American Sparkling Wines for a Festive Fourth of July

It used to be that only a handful of wineries made sparkling wine in the U.S.—namely a handful in California owned by Champagne houses such as Chandon and Roederer. The traditional Champagne process takes a lot of time, equipment, and manpower, meaning the bar to entry was always high. But winemakers in the past few years have embraced a style of sparkling wine called pétillant naturel (pet-nat), in which wines finish in the bottle, without the usual addition of yeast and sugar for a second fermentation. A much quicker and cost-efficient process, it’s allowed smaller producers to gain a toehold in the sparkling wine market, too.

A noteworthy uptick in Californian fizz, in particular, comes thanks to winemaker Michael Cruse in Sonoma’s Petaluma. Several wineries contract sparkling wine production at his custom-crush facility. He can do both Champagne method and pet-nat—with very impressive results—thus enabling far more wineries to have their own signature sparkler without as much overhead. (He also makes his own superb sparkling wines, under the Ultramarine and Cruse Wine Co. labels, available by mailing list only.)