Shower under the stars. Swim in the rooftop pool as the sun sets over the Mayacamas. Pamper yourself with holistic East-meets-West spa experiences without ever leaving your room...
Meandering pathways, 100-year old olive trees, elemental sculptures and tree-shaded courtyards create a palatably peaceful aesthetic. Bardessono, Napa Valley’s newest luxury hotel, rests on five acres in the heart of Yountville, yet it looks and feels like a protected sanctuary.
As our country begins to engage in fewer self-seeking and more meaningful pursuits, Bardessono shows how elegant eco-travel can be when glamour goes ultra-green.
Welcome to the brainchild of eco-developer Phil Sherburne. Bardessono is a hotel, spa and restaurant that delights the senses while adhering to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design’s (LEED) most rigorous standards. Crafted of locally quarried stone, steel and reclaimed California woods, the contemporary 62-suite resort combines a million luxuries to create an extraordinary experience.
Pleasure is the word of the day as this five-acre resort unfolds itself in tangible, textural layers. It looks good, smells good, tastes good. And it feels good, too because Bardessono not only honors the guest, it pays tribute to the earth on which it rests.
A team of outstanding California and Pacific Northwest artisans sensitively and subtly integrated into the Bardessono some of the most advanced environmental technologies. They outfitted guest rooms with European-style external Venetian blinds, tucked 940 photovoltaic solar panels onto the hotel’s flat roofs, and bored 300 feet into the earth to create 82 geothermal wells to naturally heat and cool the rooms.
An extension of the Northern California landscape, Bardessono is clad in 100,000 square feet of custom milled wood, reclaimed from within a 100-mile radius of the hotel site. This is a resort designed to gracefully age and change over time.
With the Bardessono under his thoughtful care, General Manager Roger Young hopes you’ll feel like the esteemed guest of a longtime friend. His team welcomes you by name in a reception hall lush with the vertical gardens of Flora Grubb and rich with Bardessono family history. A reservation desk is conspicuously absent. Instead, the reservation process involves a quick signature on a digital tablet placed in your suite while someone stows your luggage on a shelf in a floor-to-ceiling closet.
To this, Director of Guest Experiences Cristina Salas-Porras added luxuries that include Blue Bottle Coffee, artisan spirits, In Fiore skincare products, organic, hand-loomed Coyuchi linens and guest robes by Matt Dick of Matto Creative. Sherburne created daybeds for lounging, efficient bedside reading lamps, soaking tubs for two, and spaciously placed his-and-hers vanities (a detail Sherburne jokes was added for marital harmony). Some rooms boast outdoor showers and dual indoor shower-steam rooms. Every room is a suite and doubles as spa, with massage tables tucked behind paneled banquets. They are brought out when you call the spa butler to prepare the room for estheticians and therapists and their extensive menu of services.
Cabanas by the rooftop pool afford guests unparalleled views of the mountains that frame the valley. A lounge, filled with custom-built, reclaimed walnut furnishings, offers an esoteric list of locally crafted beers and classic cocktails made from the world’s finest artisan spirits and resort-grown herbs. In the dining room, Executive Chef Sean O’Toole serves up comforting, organic dishes, including curry-braised Napa Valley lamb and a sun-choke soup strewn with Sonoma coast black trumpet mushrooms. Master Sommelier Chris Blanchard matches O’Toole’s internationally inspired menu with a carefully chosen collection of wines of the world.
Equally delicious, however, are Bardessono’s custom designed wine country adventures: cooking classes, mushroom foraging treks, and private tasting excursions. If you can imagine it, Guest Experience Director Cristina Salas-Porras can create it.
Self-guided adventurers, like me, will find complimentary ultra-light Orbea performance bikes in the on-site bike shop. The French Laundry, Michael Chiarello’s Bottega and Maisonry, Yountville’s newest tasting room and gallery, are a few quick pedals away, and cycling is one of the most refreshing ways to engage with local life on the 30-mile-long valley floor.
It’s also a green mode of travel and most fitting with the eco-friendliness of the Bardessono.
Bardessono is located at 6526 Yount Street in Yountville. For reservations or more information visit: Bardessono.com or call: 707-204-6000.
Environmental Initiatives
Heating and Cooling: Each building’s flat roof is fitted with a carefully concealed photovoltaic solar collector and reflective material. A 200-kilowatt solar energy system will provide a significant portion of the Bardessono’s electrical energy requirement. Eighty-two 300-foot geothermal wells were drilled to work with a specially developed ground source heat pump system to heat and cool rooms and heat domestic water. The only electricity used in this system is for operation of the pumps. Guest rooms are constructed to minimize solar heat gain with wide overhangs and motor-controlled Venetian exterior blinds. Large expanses of glass allow winter sun rays to naturally warm rooms. Windows and doors open onto private patios to provide secure nature ventilation. Motion sensors determine room occupancy, turning off lights and electrical devices, dropping shades, and allowing more temperature variation in the room while guests are away. When guests return all settings are automatically returned to what they were when the guests left the room.
Lighting: 200 square feet of glass in each room reduces daytime lighting requirements. LED and fluorescent lamps are used throughout the property and the motion sensors extinguish lights when rooms are unoccupied. Exterior up lighting is minimized to reduce nighttime light pollution.
Low Water Use: Low water flow fixtures, dual flush toilets and waterless urinals are used. Outdoors, drought-resistant landscaping prevails, serviced by an efficient drip irrigation system. All gray and black water is treated and recycled for irrigation uses by the town of Yountville.
Material Reuse: Repurposed Tuffa stone quarried in Napa County 80 years ago for the original Bardessono family home has been salvaged and re-cut to clad the entry area of the hotel and to serve as an architectural element in the reception and dining areas of the hotel. Reclaimed wood was utilized for most of the construction.
Interior Furnishings: Porcelain, concrete and recycled glass tiles; green certified fabrics; soy fiber based rugs and organic cottons.
Creekside Protection: Building and landscaping is set back 35 feet from Hopper Creek with native riparian plants installed to create a hospitable environment for wildlife and fish and to minimize soil erosion.
Inn Operations: With a goal of contributing as little as possible to the waste stream, the Bardessono composts all kitchen and garden vegetable and plant waste in an “Earth Tub.”
Locally produced and organic food products are selected whenever possible. The restaurant is collaborating with several local gardeners for the cultivation of produce and herbs.
