Laura Mendelson and Sardinia

After years in the international luxury hospitality industry, Laura Mendelson chose Sardinia to create experiences that combine wine, yoga, nature, gastronomy, and local traditions

Laura Mendelson loves blends and crossovers, but even more she loves the authentic taste of handmade seadas, the scent of a wild herb, that unique green of the sea... Sommelier and namasté. Healing and holiday: through her websites sommaste.it and healidayretreats.com, she takes you on intimate tours shaped by this unique and special everyday life, which she herself discovered after years abroad working in luxury hospitality: an old kitchen, a neighbourhood market, a dinner by the sea. All designed to create lasting memories.

Laura Mendelson

What did luxury hospitality teach you, and which aspects did you choose to rethink in the next stage of your career?

I remember that when I started out, I read a book by César Ritz, founder of the Ritz-Carlton. His philosophy was about seeing everything without being seen, anticipating needs before they were even expressed, and… never taking anything for granted. It was a true lesson in elegance, extravagance and in how to make people feel genuinely cared for. I put that philosophy into practice: from the moment a guest arrived, my mission was to make them feel as though they had entered a perfect world.

Over the years, I have watched the definition of luxury change. It once meant opulence; now it means something entirely different: luxury is Simplicity. Authenticity. Genuineness. Nature... and Sardinia has all of these in abundance. That is where I come in. I act as a bridge, connecting travellers with authentic experiences and with the soul of the island, a force as powerful as the Mistral wind blowing along the coast.

How has Sardinia transformed your relationship with time, work and wellbeing?

Sardinia has quietly dismantled everything I thought I knew about how life was supposed to be. Before, time was something to chase. Now, it is something to savour. Work has changed too. I love what I do so deeply that I find it difficult to call it work. It is simply part of my everyday life now, woven into everything. I organise retreats, yes, but I also simply live here.

The two are not separate. Nothing here is rushed, yet somehow everything always gets done. That is the Sardinian way. There is a serene efficiency to life here that I never experienced in the United States. Things happen when they are meant to happen, and there is always time for what matters. And wellbeing? It stopped being about discipline and became about joy. Eating well here is not a chore. It is a pleasure. Movement is not a punishment. It is a walk to the market or a swim in the sea.

How do you balance pleasure, discipline and awareness across wine, yoga, spirituality and hospitality?

I stopped trying to separate them. Wine is pleasure, but it is also discipline: the years of study, the tasting notes, the respect for tradition. Yoga is a return to ourselves, to our spirituality and to the search for calm. Hospitality is the thread that weaves everything together. I no longer believe in rigid boundaries. My retreats reflect this way of seeing things. We taste wine with intention, move with awareness and eat with gratitude. Everything is connected. Balance comes from fully inhabiting each moment and trusting that the pieces will naturally fall into place.