Recently, a dear friend recommended that I visit Bardessono the next time I wanted to experience a quick get away. The Bardessono is a newly developed hotel with 62 guest rooms, restaurant and spa in Yountville, California, the heart of the Napa Valley. Bardessono is a model for elevating contemporary environmental design with a sense of place, history, and artisan values.
Bardessono’s Owner and Developer, Phil Sherburne, is a former Seattle city planner turned conscientious developer and has been an ambitious leader in responsible design for the past 20 years. Over the years his projects have changed, representing a wide range of interests and goals, but Sherburne’s philosophy has stayed the same: limits, creativity and an environmental consciousness are what shape good design. With design, he has proven, that limits become assets.
Today, this same philosophy has led Phil Sherburne to develop an unusual kind of luxury hotel, the Bardessono, which opened in February of 2009. Located on the Bardessono family farmstead established in 1928 in California’s Napa Valley, the hotel is located in the middle of the town of Yountville. Bardessono family heirs, concerned about the impact a commercial development would have on Yountville’s small town character, handpicked Sherburne based on his prior work and his character.
Bardessono’s hotel, spa and restaurant are ecologically distinguished in nearly every way. The overall site is designed to feel intimate in scale and each guest room is layered with details. Everything from heating and cooling systems and lighting to water use and native landscapes have been taken into account; along with organic bedding, cleaning supplies, creek-side protection and locally grown food. From in-room spa accommodations {built-in massage tables} to locally sourced stone and fine salvaged woods, Sherburne made beautiful use of simple materials. His practice is deeply green, and his aesthetic calls for quieter, sophisticated technologies, taking modern day advances behind the scenes in order to promote person-person care.
Within walking distance you will also find all of the best restaurants-Bouchon, French Laundry, Bottega, Ad Hoc-art, wines and shopping. Plenty to keep you busy when you aren’t poolside or at your in-room massage.
