The Hess Collection winery (https://www.hesscollection.com/) is a little out of the way, up on Mt. Veeder. It’s worth the trip, for two reasons. The obvious one is to taste their wines. The other is to see their art.
The winery was founded by one of the Napa Valley pioneers, by Donald Hess of Switzerland back in the 1980s. He had already made a fortune in Swiss sparkling water and had started collecting art. So when he opened a winery in California he also used the location to house his paintings and sculptures. And he continued to collect more widely. For a visitor to Napa Valley, a trip the The Hess Collection is both an aesthetic and gustatory experience.
The Hess Collection winery. Photo courtesy of the winery.
The art gallery adjoins the tasting room. There are other wineries, especially in Napa Valley, that also exhibit fine art. But The Hess Collection has a museum of modern art with artists and pieces of the highest quality. Many artists are quite well-known: Francis Bacon, Robert Motherwell, Robert Rauschenberg and Frank Stella to name a few. All the works are from Donald Hess’ personal collection. (The Hess Collection, get it?)
Photograph courtesy of Incollect.
As you enter the gallery, the first painting you see is an enormous portrait entitled Johanna II by Franz Gertsch, a Swiss artist. It is photorealistic and is the most widely featured artwork in publicity for the museum. Perhaps that’s to entice visitors who are not as familiar with abstract art, which makes up the majority of the paintings and drawings on display.
There is much sculpture shown as well. Some are easy to relate to, such as the full length male nudes by Deryck Healy, a South African artist previously unknown to us. And others, such as the enormous oak log by Polish artist Magdalena Abakonowicz…well, you just have to see it.
Oh, yes, you can taste wines, too. At one point, there were two quality levels available for tasting, Hess Select and The Hess Collection. The former was (and is) intended for the mass market. These wines are still available at retail but not at the winery.
The strength – and in some ways, the weakness – of the wines you can taste there is the enormous variety of wines they make. Their top wines, in the Icon series (a Cabernet Sauvignon and a Chardonnay), are quite refined and really only for connoisseurs. It is rare that these will be available for tasting. Those bottled under The Hess Collection label are the ones you might see in a quality wine shop and they lean towards Cabs. There’s also a Lions Head series with the same mix of grapes. Then there are the wines they source from nearby and distant vineyards, which they call Small Block wines; these are only available at the winery.
Overall, you might not like everything in the Hess Collection museum or the winery, but that’s all right. We don’t like everything in the Louvre, either. But there is much to admire, and an hour or so spent at this museum is as much a part of the Napa Valley experience as their wines.