Sunset Magazine’s Best of the West

Sunset April 2015

We admit we’re pretty jazzed to be featured in the April 2015 issue of Sunset as Best of the West.  (It’s even better to be mentioned alongside our friends at @SenzaHotelNapa, another historic property which has recently been revamped, which is owned by our friends & winery partners at HALL Wines.)  It’s most gratifying that this reimagined hotel built by Calistoga town founder Samuel Brannan in 1860 is getting such a terrific response from media and guests alike, and prompting lots of calls.  If you’re planning on visiting us this summer or fall, we recommend booking early; many weekends are already sold out.  More Sunset love: the Inn is one of four finalists for Best Hotel/Inn Renovation in their first Travel Awards.

VINEYARD HAVENS
Bookending the sweet spot of Napa Valley wine country – that is, the stretch of State 29 between, to the south, the city of Napa itself, and to the north, the funky mud-bath town of Calistoga – is a pair of recently reinvented Victorian hotels. The first, the eight-room Parker Mansion (circa 1870), serves as a cool marble-and-taupe nucleus of an otherwise modern 41-room resort called Senza (top), owned by the family behind Hall Wines and set right where cul-de-sacs start giving way to vineyards.  The second, a gingerbread villa called the Brannan Cottage Inn (above), occupies one of the original cottages that Calistoga’s founder, the freewheeling Samuel Brannan, built for his hot-springs resort in 1860.  Along with the appropriate antiques, its six bedrooms are furnished with  illy espresso machines, flat-screen TVs, and Roku boxes.  The buccaneers of today should feel right at home.  Senza; from $239; senzahotel.com.  Brannan; from $299; brannancottageinn.com   – Sunset Magazine, April 2015