The story of how bubbles got into wine is a curious one and not altogether straightforward. What we know for certain is that while for centuries the conventional wisdom held bubbles in wine to be a fault, by the middle of the 1660s a small group of trend-setting (and high-living) English gentlemen had decided fizzy wine was positively the cat's pajamas. After that, the race was on to figure out how to reliably duplicate the process on an industrial scale. The contest was won, after more than a century of experimentation, by the widow Clicquot in her famous Champagne cellars.

But bubbly wine isn't the domain of Champagne alone. Throughout Europe -- or at least in those areas where conditions favored their development -- other sparkling wines emerged based on indigenous grapes and local vinification techniques. Some are fully sparkling, some gently frothy, but the best have qualities that make them delightful to drink on all sorts of occasions when an expensive bottle of Champagne or fancy New World bubbly isn't really called for.

Is there such a thing as sparkling plonk -- that's worth drinking? Despite the fact that putting on the spritz adds cost to any bottle of wine, high or low end, the answer is yes. At $12 or less, keep an eye peeled for cava from the vineyards around Crémant d'Alsace, Crémant de Bourgogne, and Crémant de Limoux. Use the money you save to buy your cat a new pair of pajamas.

-- STEPHEN MEUSE