PRELUDE: BACCHANAL BATHS

WORDS BY JANE BLACK

Experience the ultimate relaxxation as you wallaw in wine at the MacArthur Place Inn & Spa.

I couldn’t help but feel like Alice who had just fallen down a rabbit hole as I stood in the bright sunshine admiring two whimsical bronze statues of blooming flowers and a human-sized chess board with marble pieces. At Sonoma’s MacArthur Place Inn & Spa, I was in wine country wonderland: a sparkling day, a garden fragrant with lavender and thyme and, most importantly, a glorious spa.

Travelers come from around the world to indulge in the sun and sophistication of Sonoma County. While other wine country refuges try to mimic French or Tuscan villas, MacArthur Place is pure California. A set of white clapboard Victorian houses, named after local trees Magnolia, Camellia and Oak, surround the gardens, which are planted with aromatic boxwood hedges and medicinal plants such as chamomile, peppermint and anise.

Accordingly, the spa menu at MacArthur Place reads more like a Napa Valley cookbook than a clinical recipe for relaxation. The delights on offer include a sweet orange massage, which promises to joyously relieve anxiety, a peppermint foot-soak with reflexology to enhance mental clarity and a pumpkin body wrap to gently exfoliate and moisturize chapped skin.

But the most popular is the spa’s signature Red Red Wine treatment. The 110-minute therapy, which takes place in a serene room that resembles a Victorian conservatory, includes a grapeseed body scrub, a relaxing grapeseed bath scattered with rose petals and a grapeseed essential oil massage. Though many guests choose it “just because it goes with the wine country,” grapeseed oil has tangible benefits. It contains a high level of anti-oxidants to replenish the lymphatic system as well as glycolic acid, which helps exfoliate tired skin.

Polished, glowing—and reduced to a happy puddle—guests return to their room to change for dinner. Complete with a king-size four-poster bed, a fireplace and hydrotherapy tub for two, the suites feel like their own mini-spa. And for those who have a hard time switching off entirely, each room is designed to remind you that, here in Napa, you’re not that far from California’s second most-famous valley, the Silicon one. Each room includes a flat-screen TV, a DVD player, surround-sound stereo system and wireless Internet.

Dinner at Saddles, the hotel’s rustic steakhouse, is the only surrender to unhealthy living. How could anyone resist a fruity Sonoma wine paired with seared fillet mignon and shoestring fries or a parfait of homemade toasted almond gelato?

Opened four years ago, MacArthur Place has quickly become a refuge for overworked San Franciscans. With luxury digs, heavenly spa treatments and a first-class steak house, it’s no wonder that, unlike Alice, most people prefer this kind of wonderland to the topsy-turvy of real life.

MacArthur Place Inn & Spa, www.macarthurplace.com 29 East MacArthur Street, Sonoma, CA 95476