The winery's founders, a trio of seasoned California wine industry veterans, are actually anything but crazy. George Vare, Luna's president, Mike Moone, its chairman, and John Kongsgaard, winemaker and vice president, each possess résumés that, given the opportunity, would have executive headhunters beating their doors down.

Moone, 59, is the guy who rung up $150 million in sales for Beringer, acquiring Chateau Souverain and Meridian, then after leaving Beringer, formed Silverado Partners, an investment group that includes Vare. Silverado Partners then acquired Beringer from Nestlé, and Moone wasted no time adding Chateau St. Jean and Stags' Leap Winery to the Beringer pot.

Vare's involvement with the California wine business is just as intimate and entrepreneurial. Before forming Silverado Partners with Moone and two others, he acquired Geyser Peak Winery in 1972 for his employer, Schlitz Brewing Company. He also conceived and launched the Shadow Creek sparkling wine brand, and planned and designed Gloria Ferrer Champagne Caves in Sonoma County. Then, when he might have been considering retirement, Vare, now 62, became involved in the Luna Vineyards project. "If I was going to do something again," Vare recalls, "it had to be fun and interesting, fit into a niche and not just be another Chardonnay and Cabernet operation."

The third arm of the dynamic triumvirate is Kongsgaard, an intellectual winemaker who has established a reputation in the Napa Valley both for making red wines and for his devotion to classical music. During his 13-year tenure as winemaker for Newton Vineyards, Kongsgaard, 48, put his stamp on Merlot. And as director of Chamber Music of the Napa Valley, Kongsgaard has invited many musicians to the winery for private concerts, including violinist Isaac Stern. Although he plays no instrument himself, Kongsgaard has built his professional and home lives around music.

In 1995, the three men pooled their talents, formed a partnership and moved the concept for Luna Vineyards into the former St. Andrews Winery. In four short years, Luna has become a 50,000-case production winery with a 42-acre estate vineyard and a 7-acre vineyard owned by Vare, all planted to pinot grigio (the partners prefer the authentic Italian spelling over pinot gris).

"Mike is the visionary," Vare and Kongsgaard volunteer almost in unison. "He's thinking ahead, he's entrepreneurial and creative," Vare adds.

Over the span of Moone's 26-year career in the wine business, he was cultivating his love for Italian varietals. "We live in a wine world dominated by French influence," he explains. "Yet with the predominance of Italian and Mediterranean restaurants, Italian wines, selling for $25 to $30 on a wine list, are the natural companion to the food we like to eat."

For Kongsgaard, winemaking and classical music come together in a happy symbiosis. Near the entrance to the winery tank room is a small desk for the winemaker and cellar hands. On the wall, there's a large rack of classical music CDs – the classical music that permeates every corner of the winery. Above the entrance to the barrel room there's a portrait of Beethoven. "Music is a symbol and a way of organizing our spirits," he says. "It's very important to the culture of the people working here. Luna has become a crossroads for classical music."

Because of Moone's love for Italian varietals, Vare's desire to start up an offbeat project and Kongsgaard's scholarly approach to winemaking, Luna has become something of a testing ground for growing Italian varieties in the Napa Valley. Even so, conventional wisdom might suggest that hanging the future of their venture on Italian varietals in a valley best known for the classic Bordeaux varietals is a crazy concept.

"My family has a small, 10-acre barbera vineyard, and I like Italian varieties," Kongsgaard says, "but I've never been involved with them professionally." Nevertheless, the decision was to go with Pinot Grigio, Sangiovese and, for good measure, Merlot. "We are on the edge here making Pinot Grigio in Napa," Kongsgaard admits. "There's no precedent."

From a marketing perspective, Vare believes "Pinot Grigio is not a gamble because it is a good alternative to Chardonnay," and there's now a demand in the market for white wine alternatives.

Kongsgaard admits that producing a Merlot is a concession by the partners to his love of the varietal and his expertise in making an award-winning style of an often controversial red wine. "In 1997, George [Vare] and I traveled to Italy to see how they handled pinot grigio. And we knew that the Italians grow merlot in the north, so we decided that merlot qualifies as an Italian variety," he says with a wry smile. Although the winery owns 23 acres of merlot, the fruit is sold off because the heavy, wet soils are not conducive to Kongsgaard's style of winemaking.

Fruit for his 1996 Napa Valley Merlot ($28) was sourced from four vineyards in the southern end of the Napa Valley. Blended with 18 percent cabernet sauvignon, it was aged for 23 months in French oak barrels, then bottled without fining or filtration. Tasted from barrel, the 1997, which will be bottled in July, is supple and rich with ripe berry flavors, anise accents and a long, refined finish.

Making Merlot was easy for Kongsgaard. More challenging was sorting out a style for Pinot Grigio. "We had hoped to find a model in Europe for the full expression of pinot grigio grown in California," Kongsgaard recalls. "We can't grow Alsace pinot gris here because it's not cold enough for the grapes. Friuli in northern Italy is warmer with characteristics much like this part of the Napa Valley." After much searching and tasting in Friuli, Vare and Kongsgaard zeroed in on the Oslavia Valley where a small group of Pinot Grigio producers were making wine with natural yeast and very little manipulation.

"They used very ripe grapes and fermented the wine in French oak barrels. It was an ideal model, almost without intervention," Kongsgaard notes. "Pinot grigio must be ripe enough to justify the use of wood. The idea is to have the wine smell like the ripe figs and pears of Grigio."

Kongsgaard fermented the 1997 Pinot Grigio ($18) in used French oak barrels and stainless steel tanks, using wild yeasts, retaining the grape's fresh ripe pear and toasted almond aromatics and flavors. It has great texture and fruit, and finishes with a supple richness.

The Pinot Grigio needed a red wine companion, so the partners naturally settled on Sangiovese. In 1998, Kongsgaard and Vare returned to Italy to learn more about the noble red grape of Tuscany. "We took some samples of our Sangiovese with us and heard from winemakers in Tuscany that we were on the right track," Kongsgaard says.

Although they felt validated, there was still much to be addressed."Sangiovese is a native Italian variety, and its biggest problem is vigor, which means that vigor must be controlled by planting on the right site." Kongsgaard purchases sangiovese from vineyards planted around the rim of the Napa Valley, in Soda Canyon and on Atlas Peak.

Sangiovese also is a variety that does best when blended with another grape, but the question for Kongsgaard was whether to use the commonly preferred cabernet sauvignon, or the more complementary merlot or syrah. "That merlot would be a good variety to blend with sangiovese came to me intuitively. Merlot is supple, better for the middle palate and adds flesh to sangiovese, while syrah stabilizes the color of sangiovese." He fermented both grapes with the sangiovese at harvest, using about 10 percent merlot and 5 percent syrah.

With his winemaking now grounded in Italian varietals, it is ironic that Kongsgaard credits a Frenchman as his mentor. While at Newton, he met Bordeaux enologist Michel Rolland. "I cannot remember how I thought before Michel got to me," Kongsgaard says almost reverentially. "If I learned one thing from him it is to make wine from the vineyard, and that's especially important with sangiovese. Michel taught me about site selection, crop and canopy management and then, when to pick by tasting and by tannin maturity. He also taught me that you get suppleness and roundness through maceration."

The Luna Vineyards 1997 Sangiovese ($18) was macerated on the skins for 30 days, then aged for a year in French oak barrels. The addition of merlot and syrah gives the wine brightness and complexity. Ripe raspberry aromas lead to a soft, supple texture with ample fruit and a long, spicy finish. Kongsgaard had a 1997 Sangiovese Riserva in barrel that he expects to bottle in July. A preview tasting revealed a smoky, fruity wine with subtle jammy notes, hints of anise, great texture and good length.

Having refined and bottled three respectable varietals, will the type-A "Lunatics" down on the Silverado Trail content themselves with this portfolio? "For the moment," Vare says, but in the same breath he recalls an experience in Friuli that held promise. "Our Slovenian friends introduced us to a white grape called ribolla gialla, and we're considering it."

Although the complex is only now nearing completion (Luna is slated to open in the fall), visitors who remember the old St. Andrews Winery wouldn't recognize the site today. Forrest Architects of Sonoma has transformed it into a timeless, Tuscan-style structure complete with a barrel tile roof, graceful archways and courtyards. A 40-foot tower addition will house the visitor's center and tasting room. The site is graced by old California oak trees, and landscaped with Mediterranean plantings that blend into the southern Napa terrain. And in keeping with California wine country's blossoming love affair with the Italian sport of bocce ball (see our "Lifestyle" feature on Bocce Ball), a bocce court is being installed adjacent to the courtyard.

Mike Moone cannot think of a more pleasant way to wile away an afternoon in the Napa Valley than quaffing a chilled glass of Luna Pinot Grigio, while tossing bocce balls with his like-hearted partners.

Contributing Editor Gerald D. Boyd is the staff wine writer for The San Francisco Chronicle, and regularly contributes to several publications on the subjects of wine and spirits.