Top Lodging – Sonoma County

The Wine Country offers a variety of lodging options ranging from crisp and clean motel accommodations, to luxury bed and breakfast inns, to world-class hotels and resorts–with just about everything you can imagine in between. Whether you are spending a night, a weekend, a week, or longer, there’s an option to fit every need, taste, and budget.

Researching and sorting through the options can be a time consuming and frustrating experience. To simplify and hopefully to smooth your experience, we have compiled lists of “top lodging”.

Our lists are not intended to be comprehensive. You may find accommodations that are not on our lists and are well suited to your needs. Our purpose in compiling our lists is to identify accommodations that are perhaps the most likely to enhance your Wine Country visit. Our lists are informed by four sources:

• AAA diamond ratings, a professionally administered rating system considered–along with the Mobil (Forbes) Guide–to produce the most reliable ratings for lodging in the United States
• Associations of bed-and-breakfast and other inns that establish guidelines for cleanliness and comfort, and certify member compliance with these guidelines
• Travelocity ratings, which capture feedback from guests in specific lodging establishments
• The personal experience and knowledge of the Boutique Wine Tour team. (We all live in the Wine Country, interact with lodging managers on a regular basis, and talk to many visitors about many things including their lodging experiences.)

Here’s our list of Sonoma Valley lodging. Please see the Travel-Wise Tips that follow the table.

Travel-Wise Tip: Sonoma County is quite large, and driving times between destinations can be long. For example, the town of Sonoma is about an hour’s drive from Healdsburg. Distances matter when you are relaxing and enjoying the Wine Country lifestyle to the fullest. And that lifestyle is also very locally focused. You’ll have a very different experience in Sonoma Valley than you’ll have in the Healdsburg Area; each will be special in its own way. We recommend that you select lodging accommodations nearest the areas you are most interested in visiting, and that you not hesitate to book a few nights in one area and a few more in another. There is nothing worse than enjoying a nice bottle of wine over a leisurely dinner, and then having to drive an hour over unfamiliar country roads to get back to your hotel or inn.

Travel-Wise Tip: There is some overlap between our Sonoma Valley and Healdsburg Area Top Lodging lists. Some lodging establishments in the Petaluma and Santa Rosa areas appear on both lists. While we recommend that visitors stay as close as possible to the wine regions they are most interested in visiting, we also understand that sometimes the convenience of settling into one accommodation for the duration of a trip outweighs the inconvenience of occasionally driving longer distances. The overlap in our lists reflects that understanding.

Travel-Wise Tip: As the largest town in the Northern California Wine Country, and also the seat of Sonoma County government, Santa Rosa has more “major flag” (e.g., Hilton, Hyatt) hotels than other Wine Country destinations. If you participate in a hotel chain points system, and want to redeem points for your Wine Country stay, please see our Healdsburg Area Top Lodging list for more “major flag” lodging options.

Here’s our list of Healdsburg Area lodging. Please see the Travel-Wise Tips that follow the table.

Travel-Wise Tip: Healdsburg is located at the intersection of three major wine producing regions: Alexander Valley, Dry Creek Valley, and the Russian River Valley. While the town of Healdsburg itself is quite small, with a population of only about 10,000, the “Healdsburg Area”–including all three of these major regions–is quite large. Lodging establishments in Petaluma, Sebastopol, and Santa Rosa–which are 15 to 30 miles from Healdsburg proper–are included in our “Healdsburg Area” list because of their proximity to parts of the Russian River Valley, which meanders with the river through much of western Sonoma County.

Travel-Wise Tip: Sonoma County is quite large, and driving times between destinations can be long. For example, Healdsburg is about an hour’s drive from the town of Sonoma. Distances matter when you are relaxing and enjoying the Wine Country lifestyle to the fullest. And that lifestyle is also very locally focused. You’ll have a very different experience in the Healdsburg Area than you’ll have in Sonoma Valley; each will be special in its own way. We recommend that you select lodging accommodations nearest the areas you are most interested in visiting, and that you not hesitate to book a few nights in one area and a few more in another. There is nothing worse than enjoying a nice bottle of wine over a leisurely dinner, and then having to drive an hour over unfamiliar country roads to get back to your hotel or inn.