Vintage House at The Estate Yountville — Hotel in Yountville

I was harassed by the hotel staff over a hat after paying over $50,000 for a group.

Let me start with the other items. When we first visited a year earlier, everything was great so out of all of the hotels that wanted our business, I picked this one. Even though COVID hit, and I could have canceled the event and saved $50,000, my wife and I enjoy Napa and wanted my business associates to have a great time, so we kept our end of the bargain and had the event.

The first issue was lack of coffee in the rooms and housekeeping took an expensive plate of cheese that we had bought. Whatever. “Because of Covid” the hotel could not do their buffet but offered breakfast next door at Perry Lang’s. They only offered two choices of food, which were very bland and you could not modify the order (e.g., you could get a bland omelet but you could not put cheese on it). Even though breakfast and gratuity were included in my bill, the restaurant staff complained that they were not getting tipped. So the hotel was not paying them. This led to poor service and poor food at two choices, so people started having breakfast at other locations.

The pool was great until the last day when it was cloudy, and I made a remark about it. Not to gross you out, but the next morning my wife made me throw away my bathing suit because something in our room wreaked terribly and it was the suit. I was horrified about the disgusting thought of the pool the day prior but thankful I never put my head below water. I almost vomited.

Then the major issue happened. On the last day, it was June and 111 degrees outside and the pool is full sun. I had about 10 employees in the pool and there were 2 other guests as well. I was in the pool perhaps 10 minutes and had ordered a drink when the front desk manager came to me and said there was a problem. I asked her what it was. After stuttering for a minute, she said that I needed “to be more welcoming of all guests including those of faith, color, and our military veterans.” I was shocked because as the one paying the bill for the hotel, I thought she was complaining about an employee, but she was talking about me. I looked at her and said, “I am not sure what you mean, but I am part black, the guy next to me is a minister and the guy on the other side of me is a retired marine, plus we have a Vietnam Purple Heart veteran with us as well who happens to be my father in law.” So then she stuttered around for a while and finally said that I may have said something “anti-Semitic”. The minister next to me told her that she was wrong (because I could not even speak at this point) that I of all people would never be anti-semitic. I then added that we have a Jewish member of our party as well. Then she looked at my hat. Because of the upcoming election, I had bought a Trump 2020 hat. I asked her if it was about her and the staff not liking my hat, because now I had been at the pool for 20-25 minutes and nothing was being served. She would not confirm or deny it and said she would get a general manager. At 45 minutes of no service, the general manager showed up and acted like he did not know anything was wrong. I told him we had a problem, and he asked me what it was. I said, “I still don’t know what the problem is, which is why you are here, so how about letting us know what it is.” He still would not respond and said, that I “should tell him what I think it is.” While still not telling me what the issue is, he kept looking at my hat. Later, I was able to confirm that the front desk manager and the staff had refused to serve us COMPLETELY all because of a political belief. If you are reading this, it does not matter who you were voting for, but here is a hotel staff that is asking ME to be considerate of other people, yet hypocritically not serving us and threatening to call the police. The problem was that they did not know I was the guy paying the $50k bill.

So afterwards, the next morning when I am...

I was surprised a hotel of this style & price monitors the thermostat & is “unable” to adjust it below 68 but, it is cooler at night than Calistoga & way less (no) roaches so that’s something. Back in the day Napa & St Helena were the destinations to seek out but now Yountville & Calistoga have really come up & come into their own. I find both towns enchanting & the crowds are all boring white, privileged, peoples that look like me. We just want sunshine, delicious food and wine, and to wear our little blond panama-style hats from Ecuador. Back to Ye Olde Vintage House; even the basic King rooms are really neatly decorated and with all the youngsters day-drinking by the pool all afternoon, it’s serene & oh so quiet and peaceful at night. Best pillows in town too. I noticed the area hotels all seem to go for the Gobi Desert Pool Towel theme & I’m ok with that aesthetically. What I find strange is that they’re a poly/cotton blend. I didn’t realize towels came that way. Bardessono does it too so I didn’t remove a star or anything but it doesn’t contribute to an elevated experience. When I’m staying at a place that looks for ways to give me less than expected (as opposed to say The Madrona or Solage d’Auberge) I feel leery & like I’ve grossly erred in my judgement. It seems oddly uncaring & frugal in a distasteful way to look for ways to skirt quality by making me wave my arms periodically at night so the AC knows a person is in the room lest I wake up feeling like I’ve suddenly become pre-menopausal somehow & glowing like a P-I-G hog. Little things like that will prevent me from returning.

There’s something very VacayInnExprezz about I find off putting. IDK though I chose this place because of pricing so my review is a bit of the pot/kettle eh?

Having said that I was elated to find out the windows all open wide & have new screens. It’s glorious to feel the ocean breeze waft over to this little valley at night. Vintage House also has a generous snack & water game & the staff is incredibly helpful & generous in their attitude towards clientele. Super fun & super awesome to enter the room & find a groovy candy pile & completely not scary-refrigerator.

Most travelers/reviewers conflate “new” with “clean” but I will say this hotel is both. Most comfy pillows in town too. The ceiling in the rooms are super high & a guy drove by me in their on-site restaurant Bottega blasting Air Supply from his PT Cruiser. Most people come for some kind of shiny new Thomas Keller incantation but seeing weirdly incongruous people are the details that give me a thrill when traveling. I like being confused in a good way basically. This place owns the whole goddammn block so it does have a Disneyland feel to it that is charming. Great staff, stylish rooms, neat city with super fun art-walk & soem lovely restored houses to stroll by after dinner if you’re up for N evening walk.

I don’t understand the mentality behind not being willing to adjust the temp to my preference, or to weirdly draw false bottom at 68 after I politely & personally asked, nor do I feel good about using synthetic linens but I removed only one star for both. That’s a management issue & the staff here are friendly & beyond reproach. Honestly though for me those are capital offenses that kill my desire to return. I kind of have to be physically comfortable no matter how highly styled or newly rennno-ed something is but...

Stayed here with the wife for two nights over July 4th. I am judging this hotel using a higher standard because of the hefty price we paid - $600 per night inclusive of fees and taxes. There were four negative incidents during our stay which would never happen at a five-star resort: (1) Shortly after we arrived we decided to go to the fitness center to work out before dinner. First we got lost trying to find the fitness center - partly due to a lack of signage throughout the property - and partly because you have to go out to the parking lot and through the parking lot to the adjacent Villagio. Eventually we found the fitness center and it was rather small and unimpressive, with about five or six pieces of cardio equipment and a weight machine. I ran on the lone treadmill, which for some reason, was turned around the wrong way facing away from the televisions. I notice that there was no bathroom, no water fountain, no water cooler, and a small fridge that was empty. I needed water so I picked up the house phone to call guest services and the phone was dead - no dial tone. Fortunately I had my cellphone so I called the front desk and they said they would send over some water. The water did arrive - about twenty minutes later; (2) we had breakfast the first day at about 8:30 and it was very good, but the second day we arrived later - about 9:30 - and it was pretty busy. We had to walk around to find a place to sit and we did find a table outside that had just been vacated by another couple. A nearby staff member cleared the dishes and said she would come back to clean the table, but she never came back. They simply didn't have enough staff on hand to deal with the large number of guest - and they ran out of a number of food items as well; (3) on the morning of our last day I requested a later checkout, which was graciously granted. Upon returning to our room from the pool area we found our key did not work - because we were now past the normal checkout time. I went back to the front desk and the associate reprogrammed our key card. Back to the room - he happened to have the most distant room on the property - and the key card still did not work. Back to the front desk again and again the key card was reprogrammed. Fortunately, this time it worked.; (4) the handle on the shower faucet was so loose that it actually fell off and narrowly missed my foot. On a more positive note, the rooms and the grounds are quite nice, as is the pool area, aside from the issues noted above the breakfast is really good, and the bellmen are terrific - even taking us in a golf cart to the nearby RH for dinner. In sum, this is a very nice hotel in a great location, but for the price, I expected a higher level of service and a better...