A dedication to respecting nature and practising green business has been guiding The Hess Collection since it was founded. That was in 1978. Now, the Napa Valley winery’s wine is among the top five requested in American restaurants, and has been awarded for its environmentally friendly commitment, Dave Guffy, head winemaker at Hess, said.

He was here in Sofia for a January 30 presentation and tasting of nine of Hess’ wines, to which restaurateurs, hoteliers and wine industry representatives were invited. Though The Hess Collection products have been available in Bulgaria since July 2008 via importer and retailer Cheers, the Friday afternoon gathering was their first official presentation in the country.

Guffy took time for an espresso – black – before his flight to London on Saturday to talk with The Sofia Echo. By the time he was to fly off, he was to have been in Bulgaria for less than 24 hours, and had managed to fit in – in addition to the two-and-a-half-hour tasting – cocktails, dinner at chef André Tokev’s restaurant Kushtata s Chasovnika and, glory be, a night spent dancing at a club.

Very unlike the sleepy life in Napa Valley, he said, where restaurants start clearing out by 10pm and clubs are something for the glam life of San Francisco. (He usually starts work at 6.30am-7am, so an early hit-the-hay makes sense.)

Saturday morning, we find Dave having just given a last-minute gold-markered signature flourish of some bottles of his wine. Like an author signing his book. Which also makes sense, because, as he said it on Friday, it was "his" winery, and he was proud of what it was accomplishing.

As director of winemaking, Guffy also oversees The Hess Collection’s 300 acres of vineyards, which can be found in Mount Veeder, Allomi and Su’skol, all locations in the Napa Valley growth appellation. One of his preferred aspects to his job is be in the vineyards, among the vines, "with a pair of shears in hand". When it’s coming time for harvest (his favourite time of the year), he personally visits every plot to "get the whole picture", where he can see for himself if the soil is dry, what the leaf canopy looks like, how the grapes taste. Because instead of relying on instruments to tell him when the sugar level is high enough in a grape, or when it has ripened to a level that will make a wine rich, aromatic and smooth, he has learnt that it is best to simply pick, and taste.

His interest in wine stems from his college years at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where he worked in restaurants and started to help formulate the wine list. "I went to work at a winery for one vintage, to see if I liked it – and I did," he says. But why a winemaker, and not a sommelier? He cites his grandfather, who was a farmer, saying that maybe it was something in the blood. As a winemaker, he gets the cream of  "an integration of farming, and doing something artistic with the wine". Otherwise put, he can go from "doing some farming" to "putting on a suit and going down to San Francisco to pour at a tasting" in the course of a day. Something that also provides him with a beneficial day-to-day variety in his career.

Given that he has been in the industry since 1984, it must be working right.

When he graduated with a degree from the viticulture and oenology department at Cal State Fresno, where he had transferred, he had the goal of having the title of winemaker by the age 30. He started at the bottom, working nights as a "cellar rat", because he did not want to carry the responsibility until he had accrued enough experience and knowledge. And voila Dave, age 30, working in Cambria with the word "winemaker" on his business card.

"I was missing cabernet sauvignon," he says in regards to the Cambria winery, where production focused on chardonnay, pinot noir and some syrah. A turn of fate led him to The Hess Collection in Napa Valley in April 1999. His wife had no qualms about their new location.

At Hess, he has joined with Mr Hess to further a sustainable way of agriculture.

"If you include the whole living soil," Guffy says, "the insects, the weeds, all that, it leaves a balanced system. Once you start messing with it, you keep having to. It’s best not to mess with it."

Hess is certified under the Napa Green Winery Program by the Napa County Department of Environmental Management. Its vineyards adhere to sustainable agricultural practices, and they are converting to organic (about 80 acres of the company’s 300 acres) – something that has its pluses and minuses.

In proscribing pesticides and promoting organic practices, what is often forgotten is that the pollution caused by fossil fuels and their extraction is just as much a negative to the environment and people’s health as bug-killers are.

Guffy give an example concerning weeds: "Roundup is supposed to break down to safe byproducts. You make one pass a year [with a spraying vehicle] and you’re good. But, if a mower goes through the vineyards to pull up weeds three to four times a year, that’s going to create a lot of pollution. But fossil fuels – diesel – are not counted against organic certification."

The organic label is "more about marketing", he says.

Regardless, minimal environmental impact is one of the key concerns at The Hess Collection, topped only by the making of top-quality wines.

In both 2005 and 2007, The Hess Collection was named Best US Wine Producer in the International Wine and Spirits Competition, held in Los Angeles.

Part of this is the result of Guffy’s insistence on both working out in the vineyard, and working back at the winery. "You have to be integrated," he says. "It would be like a Michelin-starred chef not knowing where his products came from."

His favourite grape is syrah, which he calls "fun": "I love its darkly coloured, full-bodied nature, with playful fruit and soft, supple tannins. Best of all, it goes great with barbecue."
When he first started making the Hess Collection Veeder Mountain Cuvee back in 2003, syrah was little recognised in the California wine industry. Guffy decided to include it in a blend, and write it on the label straight out: since then, people have started to acknowledge it, both as a great blending grape, and one that has a piquant character of its own.

At the moment, Hess is starting the replanting of one-third of its Mount Veeder vineyards, as they’ve "reached their age limit", Dave says. All told, upgrades will cost about $30 million over the next five years.

Upcoming are "tremendous" results from the malbec he grafted six or seven years ago. Hess is at the forefront of bringing malbec to Napa. The grape is not well known (yet) in the States, namely due to the fact that, until present, it has been poor-yielding. "We’re putting in a ton, about 50 acres. We’ll be on the cutting edge," he says.


The Hess Collection was created and founded by the Swiss businessman Donald Hess, owner of the Valser spring water company, in 1978. In 1996, Mr Hess bought 50 per cent of the South African winery Glen Carlou; in 2001, he started the Bodega Colome project in Argentina; in 2003 he acquired 100 per cent of Glen Carlou and 86 per cent of the Australian Peter Lehmann. The Hess Group has been based in Berne, Switzerland, since 2003.