Sea Ranch, California
The coast, and very little else.
A twenty-two room retreat on the northern Sonoma coast. Built into the bluff in 1974, taken back to its frame in 2019, and run by forty-one people for twenty-two rooms.
The property
Ninety minutes past the last coffee shop.
Aurelia sits on a mile of bluff between Highway 1 and the open Pacific, at the point where the road stops pretending to be convenient. There is no town attached to it. That is more or less the entire proposition.
Twenty-two rooms across three buildings and a walled courtyard, a restaurant that serves twenty-eight people once a night, a cedar sauna, and four miles of trail that ends at a headland full of elephant seals.
How it got hereRooms
Three kinds of room, all facing something.
Dining
Salt & Ember
Twenty-eight seats, one seating a night, and a menu that is written the morning it is served. Ines Okafor cooks what came out of the water and off the ridge that day, which means the menu is written after the deliveries and printed before service.
- Breakfast — Courtyard, 7:30–10:30, included for all guests
- Dinner — One seating at 19:00, Wednesday to Sunday
- Cellar — Tastings at 17:00, Friday and Saturday
Experiences
Things to do that are not sitting down.
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Low-tide walk
Walked with Ren, who has been counting the sea stars on this stretch of reef for eleven years and can tell you which ones came back after the die-off.
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Kelp forest paddle
Out through the gap at slack water and north along the kelp line. Otters most mornings, whales in the spring if the timing is kind.
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Cellar tasting
Six pours from the coastal ridges above us — the cold, difficult vineyards that make the wine this coast is quietly good at.
Journal
Notes from the bluff.
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The case for winter on this coast
Everyone comes in August. The coast is arguably better in February, and it is certainly more itself.
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Where the oysters come from
Forty minutes north, in a bay that freezes the hands of everyone who works it. A morning with the people who grow what we open at seven.
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A field guide to the bluff trail
Four miles, one gate, and about six things worth stopping for. What to look at between the front door and the point.
Winter is the good season.
Clearer days, whales off the shelf, and about a third off the summer rate.
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