The Forbes Travel Guide has honored Montage Resort and SingleThread Farms and Restaurant, both in Healdsburg, with its top five-star luxury rating in 2024. Several additional local establishments have garnered Forbes’s four-star ratings or been recommended as part of the magazine’s recently unveiled Star Award Winners list.
Forbes describes these annual awards as an “independent, global rating system for luxury hotels, restaurants, spas and ocean cruise ships.” The magazine’s Star Rating system puts an emphasis on reviewing service quality.
“Ensconced among the vineyards in Sonoma, Montage Healdsburg immerses you in wine country,” wrote Forbes. “The hotel, which debuted in January 2021, seamlessly blends into the landscape, with its 130 rooms tucked into bungalows that bear the same shade of brown as the heritage oaks that cloak them.”
The Montage Resort has a reputation for attracting the rich and famous to its 250-acre estate nestled in the hills above Healdsburg. According to The Hollywood Reporter, pop star Justin Bieber and his wife, Hailey Bieber, are among the high-profile guests who have recently stayed at the property.
Among its sumptuous offerings, the resort boasts a 4,600-square-foot accommodation called the Guest House, priced at $15,000 a night. Catering to well-heeled travelers, the hotel’s “The Sky’s the Limit” package, which runs up to $95,000, includes private jet flights from anywhere in the United States.
In addition to its five-star rating of the Montage Resort, Forbes also highlighted the Montage Spa and the resort’s restaurant, Hazel Hill, with their very own four-star ratings.
The 11,500-square foot Montage Spa includes 11 treatment rooms, a fitness center and a zero-edge pool.
The French-inspired Hazel Hill offers breakfast and lunch, but it is the restaurant’s dinner menu that steals the show.
“The open kitchen at Hazel Hill uses local, seasonal ingredients to craft dishes like plump gnocchi with fava beans, morel mushrooms and white asparagus along with tender Liberty Farms duck breast with rhubarb, turnips and a sprinkle of pistachios,” wrote Forbes.
A short drive south of Montage, located in downtown Healdsburg, SingleThread is the only three-star Michelin restaurant in Sonoma County. Run by husband-and-wife team chef Kyle Connaughton and farmer Katina Connaughton, the restaurant also has a five-room inn where guests can stay the night. (Forbes separately included the inn in its “recommended” list of places to stay.)
“To call SingleThread Farms a restaurant is akin to calling Buckingham Palace simply a house. This temple of haute cuisine in Sonoma County’s quaint town of Healdsburg delivers on the oft over-used promise of ‘farm to table,’” wrote Forbes.
Sourcing ingredients from its 24-acre biodiverse farm in the Dry Creek Valley, SingleThread serves a kaiseki-style 11-course menu.
“The Japanese philosophy of omotenashi — a deep sense of hospitality where a guest’s every need is anticipated — permeates every aspect of the fine-dining room, from the service to the artfully presented plates,” wrote Forbes.
Sonoma’s MacArthur Place Hotel and Spa received two separate four-star ratings from Forbes: one for the entire property and another for the recently refurbished Spa at MacArthur. Forbes also recommended the property’s restaurant, Layla.
Additional Sonoma County luxury establishments that were recommended by Forbes include Farmhouse Inn and Farmhouse Inn Restaurant in Forestville and Hotel Les Mars in Healdsburg.
The Forbes Travel Guide also handed out a plethora of awards to luxury hotels and restaurants in Napa this year, which include five-star ratings for Auberge du Soleil, Four Seasons Resort and Residences, The French Laundry, Meadowood Napa Valley and Meadowood Spa.
Forbes Travel Guide Star Award inspectors rate properties based on up to 900 objective criteria, according to Forbes. The inspectors are always anonymous and spend at least two days staying at the hotels they review. See the complete list of 2024 awardees here.
