Wine and mud may seem like odd bedfellows, but in Calistoga, Calif., on the northern edge of Napa Valley, the two go hand in hand. Tourists flock to this corner of wine country to dip themselves in the mineral rich mud and natural hot spring-fed pools at the spas that line downtown Calistoga, and of course enjoy the area’s most famous agricultural offspring, wine. The Lodges at Calistoga Ranch, a fractional ownership development on the property of a five-star hotel, is one of the few private residence clubs in Napa for those second home shoppers looking for an alternative to a traditional vacation home.

What’s For Sale

Luxury hotel operator Auberge Resorts opened the Calistoga Ranch resort in 2004 and quickly added 27 Owner Lodges. One-tenth shares of 2,500 square foot two-bedroom villas go for $435,000. Owners are entitled to a minimum of two weeks of planned use a year and unlimited last minute trips, depending on availability. Exchanges are available with Esperanza, Auberge’s Cabo San Lucas resort, where there are also fractional residences.

What You Get

The lodges are essentially three separate structures connected by extensive outdoor living areas that include an outdoor living room, dining area and fireplace. There are even outdoor showers off the bedrooms.

The residences are on the grounds of the Calistoga Ranch, one of the most luxurious hotels in Napa. Owners get access to all the amenities at the hotel from the spa (which is not open to the public) to the open air exercise room that overlooks the swimming pool.

There are other perks included with ownership that will certainly appeal to wine lovers. Each Friday evening, the resort invites an area winemaker to pour its latest vintages at owner-only tastings. Local wineries also host dinners at the resort and often extend invitations to the first tasting of a new release. And owners can buy bottles without worrying about how to transport them home. A grand wine cave on site has locked storage space for owners’ wines. Finally, the lodges are pet friendly, which isn’t the case with many other fractional developments.

The Helium Report Take

At nearly a half-million dollars per fraction, Calistoga Ranch is nudging into the high-end of luxury fractionals. Second home shoppers in that price range will find that $500,000 in wine country doesn’t go very far these days. New construction in Calistoga is limited and much of the housing stock is either multi-million dollar wine country estates or lilliputian bungalows. On the destination club front, Quintess, LRW is one of the few clubs with homes in Napa Valley. There are also a few options with smaller buy-in costs. Further south in the town of Napa a new condo hotel, the Westin Verasa Residences, is set to open this year, while the Orchard at the Carneros Inn, is a fractional development at the Carneros Inn hotel, selling shares for $275,000.