Among Californian wineries the family-owned Hess Collection stands out for its independence and industry leadership. Established by Swiss businessman Donald Hess in 1978, Donald championed mountain Cabernet Sauvignon while others were planting the valley floor, drove industry sustainability standards, contributed to establishing the Mt. Veeder appellation, and was a leader in transforming the Valley into the destination it is today, with art gallery and culinary offerings that contribute to the Napa experience.The winery plateaued in early 2000s as Donald's focus shifted to developing Colome in Argentina. However, with the appointment of his son-in-law Tim Persson to CEO of The Hess Collection 6 years ago, and Tim's move with his wife Sabrina and family to Napa Valley, the energy and drive for excellence at Hess has ramped up with a wide reaching redevelopment program. Village Cellars talked with Tim about innovation and evolution in The Hess Collection, from Donald's time hrough to today, as well as future prospects.Donald Hess (founder) and Tim Persson, CEO of the HESS Collection (right)◆ How innovative was Donald's approach when he started Hess in Napa Valley?Tim - Mt. Veeder is where it started. When Donald first arrived he was quick to make friends with Robert Modavi who became a mentor to him. Robert Mondavi said to him "Whatever you do, don't go up into the mountains." And, of course, being Swiss that is exactly where he went. I think he grew up with the European rationale which is that the mountain sides were for grapes and the valley floors for melons. Travelling in Switzerland you appreciate how they maximize the use of the land, with a couple of vines planted in every available square foot on the hillsides. That coloured Donald's approach on how to go about viticulture and what he was looking for.He was among the first to go up onto Mt. Veeder, which is one of the cooler areas in the Napa, and the highest elevation you can get beside Spring Mountain. He was attracted to it because he was of the mind that mountainside fruit is the most interesting, you get the best tannin structures, and the more restrained fruit expression he was after.◆ What were the original varietal plantings in Mt.Veeder, and how have they evolved over time?-- We grow Bordeaux varietals, predominantly Cabernet, and in the early 1980s were trying things like Merlot and Petit Verdot as well. We gradually phased them out, as we found what works best for us is Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec. Mt. Veeder has 13 different soil types, and with diverse topography in orientation, soil and temperature. We get some areas up there which are excellent for Cabernet, and some which are better suited to other red or white varietals. Some of these areas allow us to grow varietals that are less common in Napa such as Malbec, Gewurztraminer and Grüner Veltliner. These types of wines offer a welcome change of pace for our winemaking team as well our visitor centre guests and wine club members.The Malbec realization was quite late in coming, it was only after Donald started working in Argentina in the late 1990s, with the start of Colome. He took one of our winemakers Randle Johnson with him down to Argentina - Randle has been with us for 33years since we started Hess - and he thought that with Malbec's shorter ripening cycle, it might be an interesting varietal to try on Mount Veeder. So we started to plant Malbec in the areas that were a little too cold for Cabernet.At Mt. Veeder we have 5 or 6 different ridges that we plant on, and the crests of the ridges are excellent Cabernet territory where you get a full day's exposure. On either side of the crest you get a truncated heat day. So we've typically dedicated those areas to Malbec, and it has been fantastic for us. Our Mt. Veeder Cabernet wine normally includes about 15 to 20% Malbec. We make our wines so they are enjoyable when released 4-5 years after the vintage, but they will have 15-20 years of life in them. The Malbec helps us round out the tannins to give them an earlier approachability.Veeder Summit Vineyard◆ And the Allomi Vineyards?-- We bought and developed our Allomi vineyard on the east side of the Napa in the mid-90s, with the first vintage in 1997. Allomi has a specific purpose in our portfolio, an entry level point into Napa which is warmer, with a valley floor flavour profile. Given that Mt. Veeder is in the west of Napa, with a cooler mountain-like expression of Cabernet, we wanted to make sure we were creating something very different. Allomi is usually picked at the start of Napa's Cabernet harvest cycle, and Mt. Veeder is usually the last appellation to be picked. We feel that this is a good juxtaposition in terms of what we able to offer, with very different fruit styles.Allomi Vineyard◆ When did the involvement with art come about?- Donald has two creative passions that he wanted to pursue in his life, art and wine. He wanted to create a location where people could come and enjoy both, where they were accessible for everybody. When he arrived at Mt. Veeder, he leased an old winery that was owned by the Christian Brothers. During prohibition they were one of the few organizations that could legally produce alcohol.On the site, there were the remnants of two beautiful old winery buildings built by Theodore Gier in 1903, and Donald rehabilitated them with a Swiss architect. The original fermentation rooms are now an art gallery where we display a portion of his art collection. And an old distillery room was converted into what is now our tasting room. Donald felt art and wine should be shared, as an individual and a social experience, so entry to the art collection is free. It is one of the more important private collections in the world, so it is wonderful that it's freely available for everyone's enjoyment.Donald in the Hess Art Museum◆ Hess is synonymous with sustainability. How did that come about?-- Donald got his lesson in sustainability in the early 60s when he set p his water company in Switzerland. He was trying to collect art by the well-known Swiss artist RolfIseli, but Rolf refused to sell to Donald because he saw him as exploiting the environment by bottling water and wasn't particularly conscious about that. For Donald it was a great wake-up call and a very early one, and he committed there and then to ensuring his businesses operated in a way that we now more commonly call "sustainable".Since we started The Hess Collection his ethos has always been "Nurture the land; return what you take." Today, it is an obvious insight to us all that the land is probably our most valuable asset, and if we want to preserve it we need to look after it. Donald was into it early. When he completed his purchase of 900 acres on Mt. Veeder in 1982, he set aside over 600 acres as undeveloped land to support wildlife corridors and biodiversity. In 1992, The Hess Collection hosted the first Natural Farming Symposium for vineyards in the United States, and later actively contributed to developing the Wine Institute's "Code of Sustainable Winegrowing Practices." Donald was also on the steering committee to establish the "Napa Green" program to define best practices for Napa Valley winery facilities, and in 2008 we were among the first wineries to be certified. On top of this, Donald was also instrumental in getting the Mt. Veeder appellation officially established in 1993.◆ When did you start the current redevelopment, and what are your aims?-- When you take on a responsibility like we have, rather than simply being a caretaker, the challenge is how do you authentically advance things? Like any business you go through cycles, and we constantly have a conversation which is broadly about maintaining 'relevance'. We are acutely aware that as the generation of consumers who were the foundation on which we built the business are maturing, we need to make sure that the next generation of consumers interested in wines find us relevant and exciting - and that is a very difficult thing to consistently maintain or achieve over time. We wanted to consciously shift away from any talk of volume. Rather, the opportunity we are after is how do we engage with our customers in a way that is going to sustain the business in the next 20 to 30 years.We are constantly redeveloping on a 20-year cycle, but on top of that we have an accelerated schedule up in Mt. Veeder, where we were taking blocks off-line well before that simply because we could see that there would be such an uplift in quality, doing it is worthwhile. And we have an urgency to do it. I am really interested in putting us on the map at the top, and in captivating our audience, so we want to get there as quickly as possible.To achieve this, we've done a lot of work redeveloping our Mt. Veeder vineyards and our facilities. In the last 5 years and over the next 5 years we will completely redevelop all of our vineyards except for the Brother Timothy Block (an historic Cabernet block from the original Christian Brothers vineyard).Over the last 30 years of farming we've learnt a great deal about our vineyards. Technology has significantly advanced our ability to do detailed soil analysis, and to create more effective drainage and irrigation systems, and we realized that if we wanted to push the quality needle, we would have to make this commitment to the vineyards. We've also reduced the footprint. We used to farm about 280 acres up on Mt. Veeder, and we now farm about 180 acres. We walked away from nearly 100 acres that we didn't feel provided the quality we required for our high-end wines and the value proposition we are committed to providing to our consumers.In the past, our vineyards were planted a lot more homogenously than they are now. As part of the redevelopment, we divided the blocks into much smaller parcels. So, they have almost quadrupled in number, enabling us to become much more prescriptive in the way that we plant to soil type and orientation. In the past, it was a less nuanced approach.Christian Brothers' old winery◆ What changes have you made in the winery?--We've also put a lot of investment into our facilities, as we recognize that the more detailed approach we have adopted in our vineyards needs to be reflected in the winery too. In the early days we would hand sort our fruit and ferment it in 5,000 and 10,000-gallon fermenters. Now we have optical sorting machines and we use much smaller 2, 3 and 5-ton fermenters, all of which have double insulation and computer-controlled temperature systems. This gives our winemakers a level of control that they would never have had 15 or 20 years ago.We have also collaborated with some consultant winemakers to help drive the conversation about continual improvement at the top-end. For our top cabernet (The Lion) we have collaborated with Celia Welch, who is one of the most respected Cabernet makers in Napa. Celia and our chief winemaker (Dave Guffy) have driven a lot of vineyard experimentation with hang time and crop shading. We're then able to track and treat those lots in a much more refined way in our renovated winery facilities. We also rely on a lot of chemical analysis in a way that we wouldn't have 10 years ago. For example, using this approach, we are able to identify and isolate unpleasant tannins early on in the maturation cycle, again improving the quality of the wines. All of this is more time consuming, but much more rewarding.In the end, it is about maintaining the curiosity and determination to continually build and improve upon what we have achieved thus far. We can do this by keeping one eye on the past, learning from our accumulated experiences, and one eye on the future, embracing technological advancements where they help improve quality.