Rest assured

While lace-and-lattice B&Bs used to be Healdsburg’s accommodations mainstay, the 2001 arrival of Hotel Healdsburg changed the tone with homey and contemporary rooms, a pool and full-service spa, and the area’s first destination restaurant, Dry Creek Kitchen. Run by celebrity chef Charlie Palmer, the spacious, rustic-modern room was the highest-profile eatery in the region until San Francisco restaurant pros chef Douglas Keane and maître d’hôtel Nick Peyton opened Cyrus. Now known as one of the top restaurants in the entire Bay Area, Cyrus offers a French fine dining experience that starts with champagne and caviar carts in an environment inspired by the restaurants of the Burgundian countryside. With a multicourse menu that warrants overindulgence, it’s a good thing this hot spot adjoins the region’s top hotel, the 16-room, European-style luxury inn Les Mars. For well-fed guests, it’s a one-minute waddle from the dining room to one of the superfluously elegant rooms adorned with 18th- and 19th-century antiques. Even better for the wine student is the hotel’s custom wine program, where for $7,500, a private group of one to eight people is led on a wine tour of restricted properties and seminar by one of the nation’s leading wine educators and authors, Karen MacNeil.

There are also more all-inclusive programs that make scheduling a tasting curriculum as easy as picking up the phone. Newly launched BeautifulPlaces rents luxury homes in Napa and Sonoma and offers all the services of a four-star concierge, including babysitting, private wine tours and dinner reservations at the most popular tables. The only thing they can’t do is help clear your schedule. But as wine experts will tell you, the best way to learn about wine is to taste it. Cheers.

Hotel Healdsburg

25 Matheson Street 800/889-7188

Les Mars Hôtel

Private Homes

BeautifulPlaces

800-495-9961