Two months after listing their wine-country getaway for $7.5 million, Robert Redford and his wife Sibylle have seen it into the sunset. The couple accepted an offer of $7 million to say adios to Danza del Sol; they’d owned the home in St. Helena since 2004.
Aside from a small studio, the property’s living spaces are comprised by a house measuring just over 5,250 square feet. The exterior is expressed in fieldstone and timber, with a steeply-pitched roof and a fair amount of glass, and enough Spanish influence to give it cohesion without straying into rigid formalism. It’s an unpretentious design that enhances its landscape, and doesn’t try to compete with or dominate it, giving the property as a whole a meditative and somewhat holistic appeal.
It’s a three bedroom house, so the shared living spaces get most of the available space. The living area and kitchen are open-concept, with built-ins, tongue-and-groove ceilings, exposed beams, and an off-white treatment. The kitchen is appealingly utility-minded; no flash here, just the necessities and enough taste to make it very palatable.
There is no guest house per se on the property, but the studio holds its own as a functional socially-oriented space or a creative workplace. The diminutive clapboard structure opens broadly via a pair of garage doors, and features a vaulted ceiling for plenty of breathing room.
Acreage is central to any getaway worth its salt, and this one gets an adequate ten acres plus, with stone walls and walking paths, a redwood spa, a brick patio, and gardens that look just landscaped enough to carry a spirit of poetic insouciance.
Redford’s swan song, ‘The Old Man and the Gun’, hit theaters last summer…although he probably felt better about it after he’d robbed a few banks. The film also stars Danny Glover, Sissy Spacek, Keith Carradine and Tom Waits, a heck of a guest list for a retirement party.