Bardessono Hotel | Restaurant | Spa

Our Story & Philosophy

Bardessono is a model for elevating contemporary environmental design with a sense of place, history, and artisan values.

The Bardessono is a newly developed hotel with 62 guest rooms, restaurant and spa in Yountville, California, the heart of the Napa Valley. We pledge to care for an uncommon set of priorities: for the environment, for each other, for our guests, for the property and for the community nearby. Together, these priorities represent a vision for unprecedented and attentive service.

More than simple warmth and welcome, the Bardessono has been built upon the possibility of an intelligent exchange between the traveler and the host. Our vision for hospitality is at once generous, intimate and refined. We believe in our intentions and hope that our exceptional service, environmental practice and quality of design will define an experience every guest may come to know as their own.

Our Developer/Owner

Phil Sherburne, a former Seattle city planner turned conscientious developer, has been an ambitious leader in responsible design for the past 20 years. Creating and sustaining low-impact projects, enhanced by superior design, have come to define Sherburne’s unquestionable influence on a number of public and private spaces.

The son of Oregon organic dairy farmers, Sherburne’s approach to development combines a keen sense for both open space and community-centric structures. His formative years in a rural setting and his earth-wise instincts have influenced his skills as a businessman and his principal role as a visionary.

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.

The Bardessono hotel is marked by Sherburne’s careful and thoughtful approach. Built in cooperation with today’s Bardessono family descendants, the community of Yountville, and Seattle-based architect Ron Mitchell, the hotel represents an artful and contemporary breakthrough in luxury design. While building the Bardessono, Sherburne developed a distinct and understated message: Intelligent design is creating beautiful places and extraordinary experiences while not harming our planetÕs future. Done well it feels just right.

The 62-room 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 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 Ð taking modern day advances behind the scenes in order to promote person-person care.

Phil Sherburne’s continuing successes are as much a product of his nurturing devotion to each project, as they are his steady hand in business and investment. Among many projects prior to building the Bardessono, Sherburne led the re-development of Seattle’s iconic 280,000-square-foot Pacific Medical Center; he developed a 600 acre second home community, Decatur Northwest, in the San Juan Islands that is a model of environmental development; he created Willows Lodge, an 86-room hotel located outside Seattle built using extensive recycled materials; and he developed with two partners the Inn of the Spanish Garden, a 23-room luxury hotel in Santa Barbara, California which was designed to fit seamlessly into an historic neighborhood. He continues to be a major owner of both hotels and oversees their management.

While at work on the Bardessono, Phil Sherburne made a part-time home in the Napa Valley. He maintains a permanent home in Seattle and a vacation home on Decatur Island with his wife, Dr. Susan Casabona, and their two children.