Global Spa Roundup: Napa Valley’s Spa Solage
Calistoga is the still-funky edge of Napa Valley—the Montauk to Napa Valley’s Hamptons. With younger, greener visitors in mind, the owners of the high-end resorts Auberge de Soleil and Calistoga Ranch opened a new retreat, Solage Calistoga, last year. A sprawling series of studio-style rooms—tin-roofed, semi-private bungalows with polished-concrete floors and cruiser bikes parked outside—the resort has a casual and stylish feel. The 20,000-square-foot Spa Solage—much of it outdoors—incorporates this laid-back, natural attitude without going to the Enya place. Could this be the new New Age? Or is it just California?After checking in at the gift shop and changing in the eco-cool locker room, robed guests are escorted on a short walk to the bar. Here you can request a cocktail made with organic Rain vodka, specially infused with natural flavors for the hotel (try the Rejuvenator, a mix of lavender-lemonade vodka, blueberry puree, and lemonade), while ordering up your personalized massage-oil concoction, poured out of a stylish olive-oil container. (When in Napa )
In the 1850s, Sam Brannan, the state’s first millionaire, decided to turn his Napa acreage into “the Saratoga of California,” mixing ash from Mount St. Helena with local mineral water to create detoxifying mud baths. There are still hot springs in town, but they’re nothing like what Solage has created with its Mud Bar and Bathhouse. The Mudslide Experience is a three-part bliss-out (it’s great for couples). First, you spend 20 minutes slathered in a personalized mud cocktail, lying on a heated stone bed to draw out impurities, and then you wash off in a rain-bath shower. Next, you’re led outside and into another room to soak in a giant tub filled with geothermal waters (throwing in a bath bomb, if you wish). Your Solage “mud tender” brings you the organic vodka cocktail you ordered while selecting your mud cocktail and leaves you to soak for another 20 minutes. Finally, door number three leads to a state-of-the-art sound chair, where you’re swaddled in a down comforter, fitted with headphones, and left to rest. The Mark Newsom-esque zero-gravity chaise pulses with the bass of elaborate, Indian-flavored music to vibrate you into another state (once you get past the New Age-iness of it). By the time the mud tender comes to reclaim you, you’re barely able to hop out and enjoy the his-and-hers clothing-optional mineral pools.
If mud’s not your thing, there are also a variety of massages, not to mention an array of facials (such as the Oxygen-Rich and the Dermalucent Light treatments), which use the Kate Somerville Skin Health range. Manicures, “aperitif scrubs,” scalp treatments, and makeup applications are also available, all incorporating the breezy, young-California style of Solage.
Clockwise from top left: Spa Solage's Couples Suite, the entrance to the spa, an outdoor lounge, the spa's Mudbar, where guests' receive their customized mud blends, the Movement Studio, and a treatment room.