Kevin Healey and Sherman Smoot met playing t-ball on the Central Coast and grew up to anchor the same high school football team in Atascadero, quarterback and center, the two positions that have to trust each other completely. Decades later they were still a team, planting a vineyard together in the hills above Templeton and naming it for the beautiful moon that hangs over the rows at night. Bella Luna is a winery built on a lifelong friendship, and the warmth of that shows up in the glass.

A winery built on a lifelong friendship

In 1998 Healey and Smoot planted Carly’s Vineyard in the Templeton Gap, a dry-farmed estate block of Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Ruby Cabernet. Dry farming, growing without irrigation, is a quiet act of faith on California’s Central Coast. It forces the vines to push their roots deep for water, yields less fruit, and rewards the grower with grapes of real concentration and a true taste of the ground they grow in. Their first vintage came in 2001.

The winery leans into its Italian soul. Sangiovese, the grape behind Chianti and Brunello, is the signature, an unusual choice in a region built on Zinfandel and Cabernet, and a sign of two friends following their own taste rather than the market. Bella Luna stayed small and family-minded, the kind of place where the people who made the wine are often the ones pouring it, and where a visit feels less like a transaction than an invitation.

Bella Luna built its reputation on Sangiovese, the grape of Chianti and Brunello, an Italian choice in a Paso Robles built on Zinfandel and Cabernet.

Dry-farmed ground in the Templeton Gap

Bella Luna sits in the Templeton Gap District, the cool western pocket of Paso Robles where ocean air slips through a gap in the coastal range. Hot afternoons give way to fog and a real evening chill, a daily swing that lets Sangiovese, a grape that prizes freshness, hold onto its bright acidity and its perfume even under the California sun.

The estate is dry-farmed, which ties the wine tightly to the season and the soil, the sandy and clay loams of these alluvial terraces. Without irrigation to even things out, every vintage carries the fingerprint of its year, and the vines grow more self-reliant and more deeply rooted with each one. It is old-world thinking applied to new-world ground, and it suits these Italian varieties perfectly.

The wines: Italian soul, Paso sunshine

Sangiovese is the heart of Bella Luna, and it is a beautiful expression of the grape, red cherry and dried herb, bright acidity, fine grippy tannins, the kind of savory, food-loving red that European tables have prized for centuries. It is a wine that reminds you Paso Robles can do more than power and ripeness, that it can do elegance and freshness too.

Around the Sangiovese, Bella Luna works a remarkably broad palette of single-vineyard, small-batch wines, from Nebbiolo, Barbera, and Dolcetto on the Italian side to Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Zinfandel, and crisp whites like Chenin Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc. The range reads like the personal cellar of two friends who simply love wine and wanted to make the ones they most enjoy drinking.

What to pour it with

Sangiovese is one of the great food wines on earth, and it was built for the Italian table. Its high acidity is the key. Acid cuts through richness and resets the palate, so a glass alongside a plate of pasta in a long-simmered tomato ragu, or a wood-fired pizza, makes both the wine and the food taste brighter and more alive. This is a congruent match, the wine’s tartness meeting the tomato’s, the way it has worked in Tuscany for generations.

The grape’s savory, dried-herb side loves roasted and grilled meats seasoned with rosemary and garlic, think a herb-crusted leg of lamb or grilled sausage. The fine tannins and acidity slice through the fat without ever overpowering the dish. Pour the heartier Cabernet and Zinfandel with red meat off the grill, and save a crisp Bella Luna white for a warm afternoon on the patio with cheese and charcuterie.

Bella Luna Estate Winery: common questions