The buttery, Italian, Bergo-styled compound of the Kenwood Inn & Spa in Sonoma County’s Valley of the Moon, disguises an opulence hidden within its arched entrance, but then much about this indulgent retreat is never revealed.

The inn’s finely appointed, spacious and yet understated Mediterranean guest rooms, decorated with imported fabrics and original oil paintings, are often hidden behind draped patios within its cloistered courtyard. Because of its intimacy, the Kenwood Inn has become a little-talked-about getaway for California’s glitterati, though well it should be.

Reopened after a $9 million expansion, the Kenwood Inn & Spa is one of those places with so much to keep one occupied that many guests never leave the privacy of its lushly landscaped grounds. This isn’t, however, a place to stay connected with the world, but to leave behind. Televisions and radios are purposefully not in the guest rooms, though a choice of soothing continental music is.

Central to the Inn is Caudalie, a spa that specializes in “vinotherapie, â€? a new approach to anti-aging dermo-cosmetic skincare developed in Bordeaux that employs the seeds discarded at the end of the grape harvest. The seeds are said to contain polyphenols which are believed to trap free radicals, providing cosmetic benefits.Â

The mild exfoliating effect of the “barrel bathâ€? at Caudalie results from the use of grape and red wine extracts and organic oils. A red vine bath, honey and wine bath, merlot wrap, energy wrap, crushed Cabernet scrup and sauvignon massage are among several other treatments provided at Caudalie.Â

Whether or not it works – and there’s a body of clinical studies to say it does – just spending a day at the spa is enough to make you feel and look better. The three and a half house you spend being scrubbed, bathed and wrapped or massaged as part of the Terrace Treatment take you, for $325, to another world. But then, the six and a half hour Vinotherapie Vacation, at $650, takes you to another galaxy. There’s so much to be done in a Vinotherapie Vacation that Caudalie can’t do it all in a day, it takes two. But, that’s a small price for a new you.

Of course, if you’d rather have the wine inside you than be inside it, the Kenwood Inn is in the center of the Sonoma Valley AVA (American Viticultural Appellation). Within minutes of the Kenwood Inn are some of America’s finest wineries including Adler Fels, Arrowood, Benziger, Buena Vista, Chateau St. Jean, Cline, B.R. Cohn, Gundlach Bundschu, Hanzell, Kenwood, Matanzas Creek, Landmark, Laurel Glen, Ravenswood, St Francis, Sebastiani and Viansa.
True to its passion for exception services, the Inn has joined with Schaefer Sonoma Vineyards to offer a remarkable Winemaker’s Package in which guests, with the assistance of the winery’s winemaker, blend their own barrel of Cabernet Sauvignon. Then, each year for three years, participants return to monitor the wine’s progress as it ages, is bottled and labeled. For $13,150, package guests get 24 cases of the personalized wine and six nights accommodations at the Kenwood Inn and Spa.

Imagine returning to the Inn after checking on the progress of your barrel, to luxuriate in an oversized saline pool in a setting that seems centuries old. You might retire to a mineral Jacuzzi pool in a fountain court or a saline spa inside a rustic mill house to consider whether you should introduce more mocha or earth flavors to your blend.

Then again, at breakfast the next morning, you might prefer just to ask for a mocha and accept that you got the wine right, as a three-course gourmet breakfast is included in the $375 to $700 charged for a room at the inn. Also included is a nightly manager’s reception featuring local wines and cheeses. Guests may also purchase lunch and dinner at the inn’s café, though the restaurants in nearby Glen Ellen and Sonoma are superb.

Clearly, the Kenwood Inn & Spa takes you to an extraordinary place where temporal troubles are removed physically and spiritually, but then perhaps we’re revealing too much.