Bardessono  Yountville, CA

           "Flash images of Bardessono come back to me and instantly I feel serene," emailed my companion the day after our stay. Images like…

Pretending to read by the lap pool, but gazing at the mist drift in over the Mayacamas Range and the baby-bottom-round clouds play over the Stags Leap Palisades.

Lulled by the water splashing through the rocks in the courtyard while sipping the perfect cup of Blue Bottle ‘three Africans,’ French pressed, organic, pesticide-free, shade-grown coffee roasted just 48 hours ago. Damn that’s good.

After my in-room massage left me dreamy, floating into a bed with sheets that make velvet seem gritty.

Bardessono is Napa Valley’s latest luxe refuge for the overworked and overwrought to decelerate while coddled, cosseted and dined. It’s in the walk-about small town of Yountville. Park your car and yourself here for a few days and let the restoration begin.

The old olive trees in Bardessono’s entrance throw late afternoon shadows against the tuffa rock savaged from the original Bardessono homestead. The stonewalls and high ceilings make the reception area feel like the entrance of a cool, ancient edifice except the décor is all clean lines and whimsy with no glitz in sight. Four floor-to-ceiling rusted steel pilasters sit in the walls exploding with hundreds of sweet green bromeliads. A minimalist few bloom pink near the bottom. Around the corner, a four-foot origami sunflower—made entirely from used paperbacks—is in full bloom.

Before you finish your iced cucumber water, you’ll be trotting after a cordial greeter to your quarters. You’ll pass through the hotel’s outdoor living room. It’s set amongst shallow canals—lotus floating here and water falling down rock art there—separate the peaceful resting spots from lively wine sipping areas. A whiff of lavender slips by.

The room is a sanctum sanctorum of quiet beauty. One side is all glass with views of a lightly forested back yard with a party-sized patio. Salvaged Monterey cypress, California bay, walnut trees and redwood wine barrels milled into floors, ceilings, doors and desks provide warmth, life and interest. The definitely-want-to-sleep-naked bed linens are organic cotton from the local Coyuchi.

The bath and dressing room—extraordinarily large for the spa tables to fold out of the cabinets—is full of fun stuff. The indoor shower is also a steam room and it leads to the outdoor shower allowing one to slip between hot and cold without leaving the shower. A deep soaking tub has a garden view, its own jets and bubbles.

The organic lotions are in suitable green refillable bottles, a 1-2 low flush toilet conserves water and a motion monitor detects when you’re out and turns off the lights. And these are just the beginning of the hotel’s green wave.

Bardessono is deep green—about 300 feet deep to be precise. Eighty-two wells under the parking lot and vineyard go 300 feet below the earth’s surface where the temperature is a constant 70 degrees. The rooms and water are heated or cooled by pumping water down into the wells where it becomes 70 degrees. Then heat exchangers either cool the water or warm it up from there. This geo thermal system—and the hotel’s solar system—is by far the largest for any hotel in North America.

And that was point. To prove to all of us: green does not mean lean.

 Kate Crawford     August 2009

LINKS WITH ATTITUDE   
                        
Bardessono on the web.

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