The Hess Collection

The art is probably going to be more memorable than the wines at this mountain estate just 15 minutes from downtown Napa and right next door to the Christian Brothers’ Mont LaSalle Novitiate. That’s not to say the art of wine-making has not been perfected here. It certainly has, but the soaring four-story gallery linking the two historic stone winery buildings is the biggest draw. It houses part of the private contemporary art collection of winery founder and Swiss entrepreneur Donald Hess.

Most of the contemporary paintings and sculptures are by lesser-known European artists discovered by Hess through his artistic grapevine, though works by some big names like Francis Bacon and Frank Stella are also there. While lost in the art it would be easy to forget this is a winery but for a couple of large windows looking from the gallery onto the inner workings of the winery itself, one framing a bottling line that, if running, could itself almost be called a piece of industrial art.

There are no organized tours, so take yourself on a free tour of the gallery and also the cool, dark barrel room off the lobby, which is open to visitors and offers a glimpse at the inside of one of the original winery buildings. A winery was first built here in 1903 and later sold to Christian Brothers in 1930. Hess secured a 99-year lease on the property in the 1980s and rebuilt the winery to produce wine from the mountain vineyards he had started planting in the 1970s.

Hess now owns about 300 acres of vineyards in the Mt. Veeder appellation, which provide the core of the Hess Collection wines, augmented by hundreds more acres elsewhere in the Napa Valley and farther south in Monterey County that provide grapes for the cheaper Hess Estate and Hess Select labels.

A few of the Hess Collection wines, including the cabernet and chardonnay, are the only ones usually available to taste, but on weekends you might also be treated to impromptu tastings of some of the rest of the huge portfolio here, including perhaps the beautifully structured Mountain Cuvee red blend or even some of the Peter Lehman wines from South Australia that are distributed in the U.S. by Hess and sold at the winery (4111 Redwood Rd., Napa, 707/255-1144, www.hesscollection.com, open 10 a.m.–4 p.m. daily, $5–10 tasting fee).