The voices come to him in the night. They make vintner Donald Hess fidget and stir, these intrusive whispers.
"Buy the painting."
"No, the price is ridiculous."
The Swiss mineral-water magnate was recently at Napa's Hess Collection, the winery he founded in 1978 to house both fine wine and fine art.
His art-buying strategy usually involves a sleepless night, he said. If the unsettling voices linger, chances are he'll buy the piece. "Then I know it is something that touched me," he said simply, his English still colored by a Swiss accent.
Hess is in Napa to check in on Mount Veeder's harvest, one of the latest in Wine Country because the cool weather on the mountaintop makes ripening a gradual process. He also came to show the wines from his latest venture, Bodega Colome in Argentina: Bodega Colome Torrontes, Bodega Colome Estate and Bodega Colome Reserva.
Hess may be European in his roots, but he's a self-proclaimed New World winemaker because, he said, it makes financial sense.
"I like the New World," said Hess, who also has wineries in Australia and South Africa. "I never was really interested to be in Europe because you can't really buy 100 hectares and 200 hectares in one piece of vineyard land. You can only buy two or three or 10 and it's very expensive . . ."
The less erratic climate of the New World also makes it a safe bet. "So as I'm not a masochist, I prefer to make good wines where it's easy," Hess joked.
The peripatetic Hess comes to Napa several times a year, including at harvest time. He and his wife, Ursula, make their home in Argentina, at an altitude of about 8,000 feet in the remote Calchaqui Valley, near their Colome winery. It's a two-hour jet trip from Buenos Aires and then a four-hour car ride. Hess knows there are plenty who would prefer the Ritz Hotel in New York City, but he craves a different kind of indulgence.
"For me luxury is when at night I step out and I see the stars and no other lights," he said. "In Mount Veeder you can do it, and in Colome. There we have practically no electricity except for the winery and a little hotel. Then you just see millions of stars, bright shiny stars."
Hess, now 71, said he was roused out of retirement in 2002 to help with Bodega Colome in Argentina. Why can't Hess resist start-ups?
"I guess I'm an entrepreneur but I'm also a pioneer," Hess said with a broad smile. "I like difficulties. I like when everyone says, 'That's impossible!' When I started here (in Napa) . . . when they heard I was going to do a museum, some said I'd be broke in six months: 'Who the hell will go over there?' "
By all accounts, the winery in Napa has the most impressive collection of modern art north of San Francisco, featuring the works of internationally known artists such as Francis Bacon, Robert Motherwell and Frank Stella. Thirty years on, Hess continues to enjoy his hobby.
"Ten to 12 hours a day I'm only using my logic and as little emotion as possible," Hess said. "When I collect, I do the contrary. Ninety-seven percent is emotion and only 3 percent is intellect. That's why I'm a normal guy. That's my balance."
Hess has five temperature-controlled warehouses full of art and is in the process of building a museum at Colome. It will be his third, joining the Hess Collection and Glen Carlou Wine Estate in South Africa, with plans for a fourth at his Peter Lehmann Winery in Australia. "Art should be shared with people and shouldn't be closed up in a warehouse," he said. "I want to show that. I think I'm close to being able to do that."
The best part of art collecting, Hess said, is making contact with the artist because it's life-changing. One example is when artist Rolf Iseli refused to sell art to Hess, calling him an industrialist who was forsaking the environment for profit. Hess responded by inviting Iseli over to dinner 10 times to get a better understanding of his point of view.
"I told him, 'Thank you very much. I think you're right. I will be careful now,' " said Hess, who then sold his shareholdings in two chemical factories, one in France and one in England.
In California, Hess began a project called natural farming in 1981 and 10 years later held his first symposium to share his practices. "We called it natural farming because no one knew what organic or biodynamic was (in the 1980s)," Hess said.
Today, Hess continues an eco-friendly approach to winemaking with a herd of goats on Mount Veeder to eat the weeds rather than dousing them with herbicides. The winery was recently certified as a Bay Area Green Business by the Napa County Department of Environmental Management.
To further the winery's green practices and development of the vines, the vineyards on Mount Veeder are going through a $10 million metamorphosis of sorts with a patchwork of soils being prepped for new vines or new root stock.
"We know so much more than we did 30 years ago with trellising, root stocks and clones," said Tom Selfridge, president of the winery. A former winemaker at Beaulieu Vineyards, Selfridge began there as a cellarman under the late, world-renowned winemaker Andre Tchelistcheff.
From the most prized vineyard land, Veeder Summit, you can see both towers of the Golden Gate Bridge. The mountain is a broad expanse of vineyards, a quilt of diversity in climate and soils.
"There's a saying on Mount Veeder," joked winemaker Dave Guffy. "If you don't like the ground you're standing on, move three feet."
The Hess Collection also is spending $20 million to upgrade the winery with the intention of bringing out the best in its mountain fruit.
For Hess, winemakers and artists share the same canvas.
"I think the message of the Hess Collection is that art and wine have a lot of similarities," he said. "To make a wine takes you 15 years if you start from scratch. An artist usually has to struggle 15 years until he has a reputation, even a very good artist.
"You really have to struggle. . . . It's the search for quality, for sincerity."
Staff Writer Peg Melnik can be reached at 521-5310 or peg.melnik@pressdemocrat.com.
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