By Michael Cervin
In 1960—the year that the Four Seasons was founded—the town of Calistoga in the Napa Valley was a sleepy blink-and-you-miss-it farming community. With the opening of the Four Seasons Resort and Residences in Napa Valley this spring, both the hotel and the town are optimistic about the future.
Today, Napa is America’s unrivaled food and wine capital, and its epicenter is Calistoga with its hundreds of acres of vineyards. What’s unique to the Four Seasons is that it’s situated within a vineyard. “Four Seasons Resort Napa Valley affords guests a truly authentic, luxurious experience without any of the pretenses that are often associated with high-end hotels,” says General Manager Mehdi Eftekari. “Our location is incredibly distinctive as the first, and only, Napa Valley resort situated on an active winery.” Planted to cabernet sauvignon, the organic, hand-harvested vineyard is operated by Thomas Rivers Brown (whom Food & Wine crowned “winemaker of the year”) and offers guests captivating views overlooking the vineyards and Palisades Mountains. It also provides an immersive wine experience, from grape harvesting and blending sessions, to enjoying a guided wine tasting without getting your hands dirty.
With wine comes food, and the cuisine at TRUSS Restaurant and Bar, the flagship restaurant, is rooted in French techniques. It showcases a return to a craftsman’s approach to roasting and traditional cooking methods, paired with a commitment to sourcing the finest ingredients from local farmers and purveyors. Highlights include a collaboration with Sausalito-based California Caviar Co.— Michelin-starred Executive Chef Erik Anderson harvests, cleans, salts, and packages his own private label California White Sturgeon caviar—as well as local gourmet quail. “Calistoga is a very special town to me, and the best place in the country to be cooking, right now,” says Anderson. “There’s a lot of heart and soul here, and, of course, the produce and ingredients are some of the best around. I am very excited to work with our talented TRUSS team to create a memorable dining experience for our guests.”
Beyond food and wine, guests can relax in farmhouse-chic rooms ranging from 500 square foot to suites at nearly 1,000 square feet, all with fireplaces, private terraces, and a 20-bottle wine refrigerator. The indoor-outdoor event venues are ideal for meetings, weddings, and celebrations. There’s also an on-site nail salon, a 24-hour fitness room and steam rooms, a bocce ball court, and outdoor firepits. The spa has eight treatments rooms, including two couples suites and two pools—one of which is for adults only, the other for families. “Many of the amenities and on-property experiences are unique, namely, our outdoor pools that sit amidst the vineyard, an on-site Tasting Room, and a spa that incorporates holistic healing traditions inspired by Calistoga’s 150-year history as a wellness destination,” says Eftekari. While 24-hour in-room dining is available, there’s no way you could stay inside with all that the Napa has to offer; to make things easier, the Four Seasons offers rental cars and even bicycle tours of Calistoga.
The beauty of the Four Seasons Napa is that if you want the resort experience with everything a phone call away without leaving the property, you have it. And if you want a luxurious home base from which to explore and play outside of the resort, you have that, too. Within less than a mile, there are numerous restaurants, wine tasting rooms, and the Calistoga shops. Many people have waited for years for a property of the caliber of Four Seasons to open in Napa. Now, those dreams have been fulfilled.
For more information, visit fourseasons.com/napavalley.