EUGENE — From the infancy of Oregon's wine industry, the elevation and soil composition of Willamette Valley vineyards have been known to be ideal for growing pinot noir and chardonnay grapes. In the past few decades, those two varieties have put Oregon on the viticultural map.

So it shouldn't come as much of a head-scratcher that several local wineries have begun dabbling in the production of champagne and other sparkling wines. Pinot noir and chardonnay grapes, after all, are two of the three varieties used in champagne.

"That's our passion, and why we started the winery and what we do best," says Buzz Kawders, managing partner of Domaine Meriwether, a specialty winery with roots in both Eugene and Carlton, northwest of Salem.

"The reason Meriwether settled in the Willamette Valley was (that) the idea was to produce Old-World, classic champagne," Kawders says. "The search was made literally around the world. Ultimately, it was decided the best region to produce what we wanted to produce was the Willamette Valley.

"There's no better place to grow pinot noir than the Willamette Valley."

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Domaine Meriwether, which has its business office in Eugene and its production facility at the cooperative Carlton Winemakers Studio, produces about 5,000 cases per year of champagne in four cuvees, or blends. It produces another 2,000 to 3,000 cases of still — or nonsparkling — wine. (Although "champagne" is a protected term in many countries, referring only to the wines produced in the Champagne region of France, the term is often used in the United States to refer to domestic sparkling wines.)

Other local winemakers with sparkling wines include LaVelle Vineyards, which produces about 500 cases of champagne per year of 100 percent pinot noir grapes; Silvan Ridge/Hinman Vineyards, which produces 5,000 to 6,000 cases per year of sparkling wine from muscat grapes; and J. Albin Winery, which releases about 150 cases of sparkling wines including blanc de noir (French for "white wine from red grapes") in most years.

Jonathan Oberlander, winemaker at Silvan Ridge, says a previous winemaker happened onto the muscat-based sparkling wine that has become one of the company's biggest sellers. In contrast to true champagnes, the sparkling muscat takes less than a year of aging.

"It was kind of one of those things where winemakers get bored and find things to do," Oberlander says. "It kind of came out of an experiment, I think, but it's been served at the White House a number of times."

True champagne can require eight years or more of aging, and a process that requires handling the wine as many as 40 times. The labor-intensive methode champenoise — which involves an initial cask fermentation and a secondary fermentation in the bottles — gives pause to many winemakers and increases costs to producers and consumers.

"I think in terms of what it takes to make sparkling wine, as a winemaker you have to ask yourself, 'Do I really want to go there?' " says John Albin, a winemaker at King Estate Winery and proprietor of his private label, J. Albin.

"Often the answer is no," he says. "But Oregon has the climate and has the fruit. Personally, I think it has to be done."