October 13, 2026
Appellation Healdsburg Captures The Spirit Of Sonoma
Nestled among tumbling vineyards and stands of oak in California’s Sonoma County, west of Napa, the 11,000-person town of Healdsburg has more Michelin stars per capita than big-city restaurant powerhouses like New York and Paris. But until last year it lacked a true destination hotel to match its rapidly growing identity as a diminutive culinary giant. Enter legendary chef Charlie Palmer, who lives in Healdsburg part-time and opened the first of the town’s Michelin-starred establishments, Dry Creek Kitchen, in 2004. After partnering with fellow Sonoma resident Christopher Hunsberger, who spent nearly 20 years working in corporate positions at Four Seasons Hotels, he dreamed up Appellation, a new luxury hospitality brand imbued with associations to wine and food, quality and heritage, community and a sense of place, and chose his adopted hometown for his first ground-up location, selecting 8½ acres of open fields for the site. To help realize their ambitions, Palmer and Hunsberger turned to architect-consultant John Hill, formerly of Hill Glazier Architects, which had done work with Four Seasons (before being sold to HKS), and Hart Howerton for the site plan and architectural concept. EDG Design was responsible for everything else, from interiors to identity.
Walk Through Appellation Healdsburg
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At Appellation Healdsburg, a hotel complex by EDG Design, John Hill, and Hart Howerton and the first ground-up property from a new luxury hospitality brand cofounded by chef Charlie Palmer, the 108 guest rooms are divided among six low-rise buildings clad in cedar and PVC and fronted by painted aluminum screens, creating a village feeling across the 8½-acre site, which has been planted with mature olive trees, a nod to a crop that has been central to the region’s agricultural economy for more than a century. -
Reception check-in for hotel guests takes place at a maple butcher-block table beneath blackened-steel pendants, all custom. -
Nearby, at the hotel’s restaurant, Folia Bar and Kitchen, custom walnut benches stand on floor tile made from recycled stone under a white-oak tongue-and-groove ceiling system around a custom circular flue pipe while glazed bricks sheathe the column. -
A branded Appellation wagon for carting luggage to guest rooms. -
Custom screens and a topographic artwork designed by EDG. -
Made by Oakland collective Local Language in reception. -
Azure, an 8-foot-tall sculpture by Troy Pillow, part of Appellation’s collaboration with the Northern California gallery Ærena, sits outside the Main House, where reception, Folia, and Andy’s Beeline Rooftop bar are located.
Healdsburg is a resolutely slow-growth community, its vernacular architecture steeped in the agrarian traditions of the region. So to speed the approvals process and harmonize with the surroundings, Hill envisioned Appellation Healdsburg as a dispersed campus of low-slung, wooden buildings. “We went to numerous town planning meetings to get this across the finish line. One of the things that made the most sense was not to build one massive building but a residential-scale village,” begins Jennifer Johanson, the president and CEO of EDG, describing Appellation’s 11 structures. To modernize the agricultural language, their cedar and wood-look PVC siding is fronted by rhythmic vertical-slatted aluminum screens painted a honey color. “And we have a literal barn form with the Grange,” Johanson continues, referring to the 4,000-square-foot events space. Six of the buildings house most of the 108 guest rooms and are connected by cantilevered walkways. The spa building sits to one side of the site, to be accessible to non-hotel guests. But the beating heart of Appellation Healdsburg is the Main House, occupied by Palmer’s restaurant, Folia Bar and Kitchen, Andy’s Beeline Rooftop bar, the presidential suite, and meeting rooms that can be repurposed for private dining or crafts workshops.
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In Folia’s cork-floored private dining room, the table, crafted from reclaimed wine-tank redwood, is lined with Mario Ferrarini’s Velis 942 chairs. -
The larger of the property’s two swimming pools is nestled between a guest-room building and the on-site working vineyards and culinary gardens. -
A chair and table, both custom and hand carved in the Folia lounge. -
A chair and table, both custom and hand carved in the Folia lounge. -
Guest-room balconies, all with either pool or vineyard views.
It was here that EDG really worked its magic. The studio started out designing chef-driven restaurants before expanding into hotels and resorts. “I think that’s why Charlie loves working with us,” Johanson notes. “Because we see operational reality. A restaurant is like a machine, and you can make it look very beautiful, but it won’t work if you don’t understand it.” The approach EDG hit on to signal that Appellation Healdsburg was a food hotel like no other was to take guests inside the machine. That meant more than putting an open kitchen in Folia and offering cooking workshops, though the property offers both of those things. It meant making the hotel’s lobby mimic an informal home kitchen.
“The whole idea,” Johanson continues, “was visitors walk in and check-in at a butcher-block table, with cookbooks and wine on it, as staff brings out bites. They’ll look around and see tomatoes from the garden being made into a salad, a wood fire oven, other guests hanging out at the communal table… It feels like someone’s home.”
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A guest room’s cutting-board table, custom by EDG, underscoring the hotel’s culinary identity. -
All Appellation branding, signage, and identity also by EDG. -
Vineyard-inspired wallcovering by Local Language above a guest-room headboard, backed by oak paneling. -
Andy’s Beeline bar, named after owner Andy Blank, the flight paths of bees, and the energy of a community gathering together. -
Alder and leather chairs in a guest room. -
The private dining room’s painting by Healdsburg-based Bob Nugent and custom light fixture.
Of course, Healdsburg is in fire country, which required EDG to make certain trade-offs. The local health department tends to look askance at the combination of open kitchens and open doors leading outside, so EDG had to choose between indoor-outdoor dining and an interior layout that would create a relationship between diners and chefs. The firm opted for the latter, while still forging a connection to the outside by installing expansive windows through which diners can gaze at the site’s gardens and vineyards and rolling hills beyond.
The emphasis on the primacy of food continues anywhere visitors go, from the oak cutting-board tables in the guest rooms to the vegetable garden boxes on the patio. Beyond the overt culinary flourishes, EDG’s choices of materials and palette seek to invoke the agrarian and artisanal traditions of the region. Folia’s floor tile is reconstituted granite made from the dust left over from cutting granite slabs—sourced from La Pietra Compatta, a second-generation Italian family seeking to continue the family business in a sustainable way. Wood is abundant throughout. Guest-room carpet patterns and artwork—all by Bay Area creators, selected by EDG in partnership with Oakland collective Local Language—suggest vineyard rows. Dozens of mature olive trees were also planted around the property, a nod to a crop that has been central to the region’s agricultural economy for nearly 200 years. “It feels unassuming here,” Johanson notes, “comfortable, approachable.”
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Because the suburban approach to the hotel gave it less curbside appeal, the Appellation experience is oriented around its back side, where Folia faces a patio dotted with cedar planters growing vegetables and herbs used in cocktails and restaurant dishes. -
The doors of the Grange events building, in cedar and painted steel, with stone fireplaces flanking the approach, roll open so that they can serve as a thoroughfare to the patios and gardens. -
Custom carpet furnishes a vineyard-facing guest room.
But wine-country tourism has plummeted in recent years, as people across America and beyond curb their drinking—which makes staking the hotel’s appeal on food, craft, and nature that much more critical for its sustained success. Johanson recalls a recent EDG off-site there at which team members found out firsthand how effortless it can be to break into groups and come back together for different activities around the site—pool time (there are two), a firepit hang, a cocktail at Andy’s Beeline made from ingredients grown in Appellations’s gardens and apiaries, dinner at the Grange. She herself has come with friends for the Crafted classes, seasonal workshops in everything from floral painting to pizza making. “I’ve made the terrariums,” she laughs.
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A suite’s freestanding tub beneath a woven-grapevine artwork. -
Shadow play from the slats along a guest-room building passageway. -
The custom reception desk, rug, and pendants in Terroir, the property’s spa. -
Inside the Grange are 4,000 barn-inspired square feet capped by custom iron chandeliers hung with chainmail baskets.
Central to Appellation Healdsburg’s promise is that it should be inclusive of the surrounding community. Folia offers midweek neighbor nights with a lower-priced menu as well as happy hours open to canine companions on its patio—yappy hours, they’re called. It’s a vibe the brand is seeking to recapture in other small California towns that punch above their weight, in particular Lodi, where an Appellation opened in 2025 (a transition-renovation of Wine & Roses resort), and Petaluma, slated to bow in 2028—with EDG handling the design of both. These are meant to be places by and for locals that welcome in outsiders—which, when you think about it, is pretty fundamental to the meaning of the word appellation. Turns out, sometimes there is something in a name.
PROJECT TEAM
jennifer johanson; akiko hrovat; michael dungca; sarah lauffer; matt vuolo; emily webb; james levieux: edg design. craig roberts; anne howerton; doug atmore: hart howerton. john hill: architecture consultant. niteo lighting: lighting consultant. imeg: structural engineer. exp: mep. carlile macy: civil engineer. rochdale spears: custom furniture workshop. r.d. olson: general contractor.
PRODUCT SOURCES
FROM FRONT iworks group: custom pendants (reception, private dining, spa, grange). carroll leather: bench leather (folia). arto: column brick. sossego: barstools. stone source: floor tile. 9wood: ceiling system. acucraft fireplace systems: custom flue pipe. sonoma millworks: table (private dining). wicanders: flooring. potocco: chairs. akula living: chaise lounges (pool). tuuci: umbrellas. pierpont: custom rug (lounge). light annex: custom floor lamp (guest room). c.f. stinson: sofa fabric. rh: sconce. fil doux textiles: headboard fabric. beaufurn: stools (bar). tile club: bar face tile. da vinci marble: bar counter. designform furnishings: green chairs (guest room). ratana: outdoor furniture (grange). cm hospitality: custom carpet (guest room). workshop twenty-one: custom drapery. kohler co.: tub (suite). delta faucet company: tub filler. zenith rugs: custom rug (spa). THROUGHOUT azek company: exterior slatting.
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