The Smoking Loon

Don Sebastiani & The Smoking Loon

Don Sebastiani & Sons strive to produce quality wine at an approachable price. Winemaker Greg Kitchens works to create great wines that our customers identify as a reliable purchase, and Greg has developed a distinctive character for each one of our brands. Each wine's individual profile evolves with changes in established vineyard relationships, available fruit and flavour trends in the industry. The approach to wine-making at Don Sebastiani & Sons is to consistently create quality, charcterful wines in a style which is recognizably our own - The Smoking Loon is typical of this approach, creating quality, varietal wines from traditionally grown local varieties, indicative of their place of origin.

Grapes for The Smoking Loon Viognier were sourced from Clarksburg AVA and Monterey County - Clarksburg AVA is an up and coming wine region located in California's Sacramento Delta. The soils here are a combination of poorly-draining clay and rich loam, meaning vines experience nutrient-rich, yet sometimes arid conditions. During the growing season, warm days give way to cooling afternoon breezes from the San Francisco Bay, dropping temperatures down 30 to 40°F from their daytime highs. This mass of cool air allows wine grapes to retain more acidity than those grown in similarly warm regions. The Monterey AVA is located in eastern Monterey County, California, running roughly 100 miles north of Monterey Bay to its southern point, abutting Paso Robles, California. The soils here are sandy and require extensive irrigation. Much like Clarksburg, cool air is funnelled in from Monterey Bay, making the north-eastern end of this region very cool and well suited to growing grapes with higher levels of acidity.