NORTH OF SONOMA on Highway 128, you'll find many wineries and a lot more open space in the region known as Anderson Valley. It's wine country, but it's still more country than wine. As you meander through stands of oak and redwood, you can find a number of reputable wineries, even a brewery or two, but today I was looking for sparkling (don't call it champagne) wine.

We rolled into Pacific Echo in the town of Philo on a crisp day and ventured into the small, whitewashed house that is home to its tasting room. For $3 (refundable with purchase of a bottle), we were given a sampling of five sparkling wines: a brut, a 1996 blanc de blancs (so named because it's made only from chardonnay), a 1995 private reserve brut, a 1998 brut rosé, and a crémant.

Crémant is a term that, for legal reasons, disappeared in the early 1990s among producers of sparkling wine in the European Union, but it lives on in the United States. Traditionally, crémant (the word means "creaming") wines were less fizzy because of less pressure in the bottle and also because of their creamy mousse – what is known as "head" on a beer – that slowly unfolds and leaves a small ring around the inside of the glass as it recedes. Pacific Echo's crémant was much smoother than its other offerings and suited my palate a bit better than its more traditional brut, the one available in many stores throughout the Bay Area. The pink-hued brut rosé piqued my interest with its flavors of red berries that emerged nicely thanks to the dryness of the wine.

It can take a while to decipher the difference between designations like brut, dry, extra dry, etc., but they all have to do with sweetness. Extra brut is considered completely dry with .5 percent or less sugar, making it the least sweet and very crisp. Brut is dry with less than 1.5 percent sugar, extra dry or extra sec may contain 1.2 to 2 percent sugar (so, counterintuitively, brut is drier than extra dry), sec is medium sweet at 1.7 to 3.5 percent sugar, demi sec is 3.3 to 5 percent, and doux is very sweet with more than 5 percent.

A little bit up the road, and a bit upscale, Roederer Estate carries on the tradition of Champagne Louis Roederer, founded in France in the notable year of 1776. Looking to expand production 200 years later, it settled not in Sonoma or Napa but in the Anderson Valley. Best-known for the superpremium Cristal (created on its 100th anniversary at the request of Czar Alexander II), the Roederer name is now associated with rap royalty whose appreciation for bling bling rivals that of a Russian emperor. The California wing, Roederer Estate, produced a cuvée (the 1990 L'Ermitage Brut) that was selected for visiting French president Jacques Chirac when he dined at the Clinton White House, and the extra dry was created especially for the White House.

At the tasting room, perched atop a bluff o'erlooking rolling vineyards, we had the opportunity to taste several wines available only on-site. On the day we visited, we were offered samples of both the standard and magnum (1.5 liter) bottles, and the difference was notable, despite the fact that they were both part of the same bottling. The magnum was a bit smoother and creamier with breezy, floral scents and clearly discernable notes of strawberry and raspberry. It was almost like a combination of crémant and brut rosé styles ... we ended up springing for the magnum. And no, we didn't get the bigger bottle because I was trying to make up for buying pink champagne (as far as you know).

Even a standard-size bottle of good fizz is reason for celebration, but the bigger the bottle, the bigger the bash. Once past the magnum, you enter the realm of biblical kings: the Jeroboam (equivalent to four standard bottles, or three liters); the Rehoboam (six bottles); the Methuselah (eight bottles); and eventually the Nebuchadnezzar, which is the equivalent of 20 standard bottles and can require three people to lift and pour. Why the kings? No one knows. But then, if I were a champenois hunkered down in one of my caves rippin' through a Nebuchadnezzar with a few colleagues, I might even forget how to speak.

Pacific Echo. 8501 Highway 128, Philo. (707) 895-2065, www.pacific-echo.com. Call for hours. Roederer Estate. 4501 Highway 128, Philo. (707) 895-2288, www.roedererestate.net. Daily, 11 a.m.-5 p.m.